When the news broke yesterday that the Major League Baseball (MLB) would allow teams and the league to partner with CBD brands that are NSF-certified, Richard Harrington was not surprised.
As founder of Adapt Brands, makers of the only NSF-certified for Sport hemp beverage currently on the market, he had been in contact with the league since a week ago to discuss potential partnerships. Even at this early stage, considering the opportunity, timing is everything.
“We’re ready for this thing to blow up very quickly,” Harrington said. “I still think that we have at least a three to six month head start on any other companies. It’s why the MLB brought us in first because we’re the only hemp beverage to have this certification.”
Sports Business Journal broke the news on Wednesday that league officials reportedly told team marketers during a conference call that CBD products would be an “approved category” moving forward. For now, the League has remained quiet on the details of the decision.
Forget singles or doubles: in jumping into CBD, MLB is looking for a home run. Up until now, the four major U.S. sports leagues had stayed away from officially partnering with CBD brands because the ingredient remains federally prohibited.
NSF Certified for Sport is an independent, third-party certification program that tests dietary supplements to ensure they are safe for athletes and do not contain banned substances. For Harrington, getting Adapt products NSF-certified was always part of the bigger goal to compete with the major sports drink brands like Gatorade or Body Armor.
NSF provides a leg-up over other brands who want to get into the CBD sports drink category because the certification guarantees to consumers that no banned substances are in the product and it’s safe for athletes to drink, Harrington said.
As a former college football player at Oregon State University who suffered many injuries during his athletic career, Harrington embraced CBD and hemp extract as an alternative to opioids. Part of Adapt’s philosophy is to combat opioid use by providing a natural, functional hydration beverage for both athletes and everyday consumers.
“If it’s good enough for professional athletes to take, it becomes good enough for the next generation of athletes to take,” Adapt Investor and MLB second baseman Jason Kipnis said in a statement to BevNET.
Along with Kipnis, Adapt lists professional volleyball player Colton Cowell, Houston Texans quarterback Kyle Allen, Jaguars wide receiver Christian Kirk, Cowboys quarterback Will Grier and professional soccer player Matt Polster as investor-athletes.
The MLB’s decision is progressive in supporting products with pain relief and anti-inflammatory properties while removing the stigma from CBD from a broader consumer base, Harrington said.
“It was very tough to get this certification,” he said. “ And being a first mover – even though we’re a small company – is a very big deal.”
Adapt won’t be the only CBD brand jockeying for a piece of the MLB’s sponsorship pie. Kill Cliff, which markets both CBD-infused and non-infused energy drinks, already has a deal in place with the Atlanta Braves. The brand hopes to leverage its national distribution network with Southern Glazer’s to give it a competitive advantage over other CBD beverage brands muscling into what is expected to be a larger push across all professional sports.
“You already have the UFC. Now you have the MLB,” Kill Cliff CEO John Timar said. “You’re going to start to see the dominoes fall with other sports leagues.”
MLB’s decision would open the doors for Kill Cliff to sell its CBD products at Atlanta’s Truist Park.
Kill Cliff is banking on its existing visibility through mixed martial arts and its work with veterans to push its energy and CBD drinks further into more retail channels. The beverage maker has already begun the process of NSF certification for its SKUs, part of its strategy when crafting the initial deal with the Braves.
Timar is enthusiastic about MLB’s NSF certification requirement for CBD products, as “ the industry is still rife with poor labeling.”
“There’s a lot of labels that mislead consumers and a lot of shoddy testing out there. And they’re gonna hammer the vendors to ensure that everything they’re saying on the product is exactly what’s in the product and it is all coming from authoritative sources.”
That’s not to say the expensive certification process for NSF will be feasible for every CBD brand.
For smaller businesses like CBD drink and supplement maker Guardian Athletic, “NSF is known as a way to go under,” according to the company’s VP of Marketing and Branding, Nathan Kridler.
Beverages are a volume game and it’s hard enough to be profitable when you factor in the price of CBD ingredients and taxes, let alone pay for a costly certification, Kridler said. He thinks that the MLB’s decision will benefit a few of the bigger players in the CBD beverage category but mostly “give the green light to players to go and seek sponsorships.”
That won’t stop some CBD beverage brands from trying to partner with an MLB team. Colorado-based Miraflora has seen the “opportunity for athletes to use CBD as a recovery tool” and developed the +Sports Sparkling CBD Beverage with those applications in mind, said co-founder and COO Brent Facchinello. The brand currently sponsors professional triathletes, climbers and skiers, and hopes that it might land a partnership with the Rockies in the future.
“We feel this is a landmark decision that will likely pave the way for this category to open up in other professional sports, as well as further educate the mainstream public about CBD,” he said.
The CBD beverage market has become crowded as more and more states allow the sale of cannabis products. According to 360 Market Updates, the market for CBD beverages is “likely to grow $643.9 million by 2026, from $37 million in 2020, at a CAGR of 61.1% from 2022 to 2026.”
Athletes – active and retired – have entered the space as investors and brand ambassadors like four-time NBA Finals Champion Klay Thompson’s partnership with Just Live or former NFL running back Terrell Davis founding CBD beverage company Defy.
John Timar calls Kill Cliff a “disruptor” brand that uses “guerilla warfare” to break norms in the beverage category. He is excited at the prospect of CBD drinks being not only sold in major sports stadiums but how CBD is moved between states and advertised to consumers. It could disrupt the norms that have constrained CBD products from becoming mainstream and could potentially generate momentum for federal action on CBD as an approved ingredient.
“It’s a big deal,” he said. “(MLB) drives massive revenue on television and if they are going to open up the category like this that’s going to require states and local governments to create policies and legislations that are accepting of that.”