Kobe Bryant Wants to Sell You a Sports Drink
The NBA legend isn’t a pitchman for Bodyarmor—he’s negotiating with convenience stores and plotting to bring down Gatorade.
Kobe Bryant takes a meeting with an executive from a convenience store chain. The former NBA star is more than an investor in Bodyarmor.
Source: Christian Anguiano/Bodyarmor
Kobe Bryant has a sales meeting.
Across the table is a middle-aged man in a blue suit who works at a large convenience store chain. He’s seated in the corner of a makeshift conference room in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Outside are hundreds of suppliers of beef jerky, cigarette lighters, hot dogs, motor oil, potato chips, vape pens, beer and everything else you might expect to find at the annual trade show for the National Association of Convenience Stores. Mom-and-pop vendors display nicotine toothpicks and pickle popsicles down the hall from where Coca-Cola, Conagra, MillerCoors and other mega-corporations have booths as big as houses, with stadium-style video boards and servers passing out free samples. Monster Energy has a dance floor. Hostess has someone in a Twinkie costume.