Gatorade

In 1965, the assistant coach of the University of Florida football team , Dwayne Douglas, faced a problem: his team players were constantly hospitalized during games and training due to dehydration , with little or no urination. Douglas turned to Dr. Robert Cade , then head of the Department of Nephrology and Electrolytes , and he found that the loss of fluids was caused by excessive sweating, during which the players lost not only water, but also potassium and sodium important for the balance of substances. This also led to lower levels of energy and stamina among players ^[3] .

Cade turned to the trainer of the university team Ray Graves with a request to allocate players for him to experiment, and got ten football players from the freshmen team at his disposal. The experiments showed that during training in the blood of athletes, the sugar content decreased; the total blood volume also decreased, leading to various negative consequences for the body ^[3] . Cade and his staff concluded that it is possible to quickly restore the balance of substances in the body with the help of water, in which the necessary salts and glucose will be dissolved. The first prototype of such a mixture was so disgusting to the taste that Cade himself, who tried it, immediately vomited, and the rest of the staff could only taste it in small sips, not leaving far from the sink. It was clear that players would not be able to drink such a mixture in quantities sufficient to restore the balance of substances. It took a significant amount of lemon juice to drown out the rotten taste of the drink and make it if not tasty, then at least usable ^[4] .

The first test was carried out by Cade’s lab product during a training match between the second university team and the freshmen team. Freshmen were allowed to drink Cade's mixture, while the second team drank plain water. The more experienced and physically powerful second team led after the first half of the game with a score of 13: 0, but the second half was completely for freshmen who spent one successful combination after another and did not give their opponents any more points ^[5] . The very next day, Cade provided with his mix of players the first team of Graves in the match against the team of the University of Louisiana. The Louisiana team, considered the undisputed favorite of the meeting, kept the score after three quarters of the match, but players from Florida managed to snatch victory in the last quarter at a temperature of 39 ° C. In the next season of the NCAA Championship , Coca-Cola Cade was already drank by the entire first team of the University of Florida, which showed a number of record results this year and ended it with a balance of victories and defeats of 8-2, earning a reputation as a “team of the second half” and winning the championship title ^[3] . At the same time, the team suffered one of its two defeats when the machine with the restoring drink for a mysterious reason did not reach the place of the game ^[6] . In addition, the team, in which 15 players were hospitalized in the first two games of the season, did not lose more than the rest of the year ^[3] . By the middle of the season, Cade’s drink acquired a name, which later became a trademark: Gatorade. As the author of the name Jim Free recalled, it combined the name of the Florida team - “Gators” - and the word “lemonade” ( English lemonade ) ^[7] .

The key to the success of the Florida team became public after the final match of the season, in which the Gators beat the team of the University of Miami, and in December 1966, the University of Florida issued an official statement on the new drink ^[3] . At this stage, Cade was already thinking about the commercial production of Gatorade, even contacting the financial department of the university with a request for sponsorship followed by an equal share of income, but this application was rejected ^[8] . However, the victory of the talented Florida team, led by future professional quarterback Steve Spurrier , brought fame to Cade and his drink. In 1967, one of his former assistants, who had found work at Indiana University, managed to interest the Stokely-Van Camp food industry leaders, whose headquarters were located in Indianapolis; by the fall of that year, the Stokely-Van Camp secured rights to it nationwide. By 1973, a series of lawsuits was completed, as a result of which part of the proceeds began to flow to the University of Florida and to the employees of the Cade Laboratory ^[3] . Over the next four decades, copyrights brought each of the inventors of Gatorade $ 30 million ^[9] . Another legal problem of manufacturers in the first years of release was the fact that the sweetener used in the drink - sodium cyclamate - was recognized as a carcinogen hazardous to health and was banned in the USA in 1969; it had to be replaced with fructose ^[10] .

In 1983, Stokely-Van Camp was acquired by Quaker Oats , which launched a large-scale advertising campaign involving the famous basketball player Michael Jordan . Quaker Oats emphasized in her campaign the scientific foundations on which the regenerative effect of Gatorade was built ^[3] . In order to create an appropriate image , the Gatorade Sports Physiology Laboratory was founded in 1985 under the leadership of Dr. Robert Murray; In 1988, the Gatorade Sports Research Institute was created on the basis of the laboratory ^[11] .

Recognition of the brand was also promoted by the spontaneously arisen sports tradition. In 1985, before the match between the NFL teams New York Giants and Washington Redskins , New York team coach Bill Parsells, trying to motivate his Nose Guard Jim Burth , plagued him for a week with stories about how the rival team player would deal with him . When the Giants won the match with a score of 17-3, Burt grabbed a fridge vat with the rest of Gatorade and threw it onto the coach. After the first shock, Burt's teammates appreciated the joke and already at the next game they celebrated the victory in the same way. Subsequently, the Giants player Harry Carson began arranging for the Gatorade “shower” in each winning match. Appreciating the value of regularly showing this ritual on television, Quaker Oats owners thanked Carson and Parcells with gift vouchers ^[12] . The “soul from Gatorade” tradition was picked up by other teams, and its popularity became so high that the championship of Burt and Carson in his invention was even disputed by Chicago Bears player Dan Hampton, who claimed to have done this trick for the first time a year before them. Over time, water and other drinks began to take the place of Gatorade in the ritual, and during the Giants' visit to the White House, Carson arranged for President Reagan a "shower" of popcorn, which was nevertheless poured into a Gatorade bucket ^[13] .

As a result of the advertising campaign, Gatorade actually turned into a monopoly in the American sports drinks market: the products of this series accounted for 80% of the total sales of sports drinks in the USA. For a long period after 1983, Gatorade sales grew by 20% annually - from $ 100 million in 1983 to more than $ 2.2 billion in 2001. This year, a new change in ownership of the Gatorade brand took place when Quaker Oats was acquired by PepsiCo ^[3] .

In the 21st century, four decades after the invention of Gatorade, this brand remains dominant in the sports drinks market in the United States and one of the leading in the world. This is largely due to the successful positioning of drinks in this series as having a scientific basis and giving real sports results. Since 2004, under a seven-year contract (secured by sponsorship of $ 45 million per year), PepsiCo has become the official supplier of sports drinks for all NFL teams; in the middle of the first decade of the new century, such contracts were also concluded between her and 28 of the 30 NBA teams, and the total amount of advertising contracts during this period exceeded $ 135 million per year ^[14] . Although the trademark owners refused to sign advertising contracts with individual athletes for almost 30 years and only in 1991 entered into such a contract with Michael Jordan, who at that time became the only “face” of Gatorade ^[15] , over time, such sports stars like Mia Hamm (since 1999), Tiger Woods , Dwayne Wade , Yao Ming , Candice Parker , Landon Donovan , Abby Wambach , Derek Jeter , Peyton Manning ^[10] , Serena Williams and Usain Bolt ^[2] .

As a result, the Gatorade series retains almost absolute control over the North American sports beverage market. Even despite the fact that on average Gatorade products are 7-8% more expensive than competitors, in 2011 they occupied 73.3% of the total sales of isotonic drinks in the USA; for comparison, their main and almost unique competitor - Powerade (manufacturer of Coca-Cola), which has successfully expanded sales volumes since 2006 due to almost 20 percent discounts - occupied 24.5% of the US market in 2011 ^[1] . Gatorade is also sold in more than 80 countries around the world ^[10] , controlling 46% of the global sports beverage market, according to 2013 studies. In 2012, Gatorade was part of Forbes magazine's list of the hundred most influential brands in the world ^[2] .

• Lindsay Parks Pieper. Gatorade // American Sports: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas / Murry R. Nelson (Ed.). - Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2013 .-- Vol. 2. - P. 465-467. - ISBN 978-0-313-39753-0 .
• Darren Rovell. First in Thirst: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat Into a Cultural Phenomenon . - NY: AMACOM, 2006 .-- ISBN 0-8144-7299-0 .

• Gatorade Sports Science Institute
• Joe Kays & Arline Phillips – Han. Gatorade: The Idea that Launched an Industry (Neopr.) . University of Florida. Date of treatment October 19, 2014.