Gatorade Zero, released a year ago, captured a 7.5 volume share of the sports drink category at retail during the first half of this year, surpassing Powerade Zero’s 6.4 share. It was in the most recent quarter that Gatorade Zero overtook Powerade Zero. As shown in table 1 below, the share gap between Gatorade Zero and Powerade Zero is even greater on a dollar basis. More broadly, full-calorie sports drinks continued to decline during the first half of this year. Regular Gatorade lost 5.8 share points and regular Powerade lost 1.6 share points. Gatorade’s RTD sports drink variants in aggregate lost volume and dollar share. 

Bodyarmor.  While Bodyarmor reached a 5.0 market share by volume during the first half of this year, the brand’s dollar share was almost twice that total. However, Bodyarmor’s volume growth slowed during the course of this year. The brand increased almost +65% during the second quarter, compared to a +116% jump during the first quarter. Year-to-date growth was +81.2%. 

Convenience.  Bodyarmor’s rise has been helped in large part by its growth in convenience stores, an important and profitable single-serve channel. During the first half of this year, Bodyarmor more than doubled its sports drink volume share in c-stores to almost 11.0 (table 2). Total Bodyarmor sales of $154 million in c-stores during the first-half of this year surpassed Arizona tea sales of $110 million (not in table). Meanwhile, Gatorade Zero grabbed more than an 8.0 share of the sports drink category by volume and dollars in the c-store channel, outpacing Bodyarmor’s share gains. Gatorade Zero’s growth appears to have come at the expense of regular Gatorade and Powerade, however.

Perspective.  After a slow start defending its leading US sports drink market share (now 70.0) against Powerade Zero and more recently Bodyarmor, Gatorade is fighting back. In addition to Gatorade Zero, PepsiCo this week launched Bolt24 (BD 6/28/19), an all-natural answer to Bodyarmor, which signed an investment and distribution agreement last year with Coca-Cola.