One of country music’s biggest stars is joining the sports drink wars.
Bodyarmor announced on Monday that seven-time Grammy-award-winning singer Carrie Underwood will be the first celebrity underwriter, while the sports drink maker aims to increase his appeal. As part of the deal, Underwood will acquire an undisclosed equity stake in the company and will appear alongside James Harden in Bodyarmor Lyte’s first-ever television campaign, debuting Monday during “The Bachelor.” She will also appear in advertisements for Bodyarmor’s premium SportWater product.
“I’ve probably been working on myself for the past 15 years and have been falling in love with health and fitness more and more,” Underwood told CNBC. “So it ties it all together and I love that I have been able to create this great web of health and fitness things in my life.”
Underwood joins an impressive roster of the brand’s endorsers, including NBA star James Harden, PGA golfer Dustin Johnson, MLB’s Mike Trout, pro tennis player Naomi Osaka and soccer star Megan Rapinoe. The late Kobe Bryant was one of the original investors in Bodyarmor and was instrumental in mainstreaming the brand.
Underwood said that while she’s clearly not a professional athlete (though she jokes that singing can also be physically difficult), she believes she can help open doors for Bodyarmor by reaching new audiences.
“I can talk to working moms and people like me because that’s what I do and that’s what I know,” she said.
“Carrie is what we see in a lot of consumers. … She’s a mother and she’s a woman. She has two kids and she’s on the run, and she leads this hectic lifestyle and she’s in need of healthy hydration,” said Mike Repole, CEO and Founder of Bodyarmor.
Underwood said one of the things that was attractive about this deal is the fact that she was offered an equity stake in Bodyarmor.
“You want to be personally invested in the success of the business. It’s definitely a motivator to just sit in and work and get his product to as many people as possible,” she said.
Underwood’s business portfolio has grown rapidly over the past decade. The country singer first rose to prominence in 2005 after winning American Idol. She has sold more than 64 million records worldwide. She has appeared in television, film, is the voice of NBC’s Sunday Night football, and is also a bestselling author.
She has also been very active in the gym. Almost six years ago she ventured into fitness wear with the launch of CALIA, a training line made exclusively for Dick’s Sporting Goods. The lifestyle brand enjoyed rapid success and became the second most popular women’s brand for the sporting goods trade. In December, Dick’s introduced its first pop-up stores with the brand.
This year, Underwood introduced a fitness app called FIT52 in collaboration with her longtime personal trainer Eve Oreland. It was inspired by Underwood’s passion for an active lifestyle, she said.
The singer’s latest collaboration is a perfect fit with her personal mission to ensure that health and wellness are at the forefront of everything she does.
“I am fortunate to have been able to develop my passion for health and fitness into a business model and a personal brand that I can stand behind and be proud of,” she said.
Bodyarmor was founded in 2011 by businessman and beverage industry veteran Mike Repole, who previously helped found Glaceau, the creator of Vitaminwater. According to data from Beverage Digest, the brand is the third largest sports drink on the market, with 13% of sales in the category.
Bodyarmor called in $ 1 billion in sales last year, up 70% from 2019, Repole said. The sale was supported in part by the purchase of a minority stake by Coca-Cola in 2018, leading to increased visibility and distribution.
“They are certainly one of the fastest growing sports drinks,” said Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. “They’ve managed to maintain significant growth rates, which was really interesting.”
Repole’s goal is to dethrone industry leader Gatorade, which is owned by PepsiCo and controls 70% of the market.
“I wanted to be the number one sports drink by 2025,” he said. “I said that back in 2011. A lot of people laughed.”
“Gatorade is now five times its size,” he continued. “Ten years ago they were 500 billion times our size. So we closed the gap from 500 billion to five times our size.”
Making the brand more mainstream through recommendations like Underwood’s is one of the ways he expects to get there.
“The other traditional sports drinks don’t go outside the athlete’s box, and you know, Bodyarmor has always been innovative, always different,” he said.
Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.