Gatorade is ditching sugar. 
 
 Gatorade Zero, a thirst quencher without sugar or carbs, hit stores around the country this week. It comes in orange, lemon lime, and glacier cherry, and is priced in line with the brand's classic sports drink. 
 
 The new drink is a tacit admission that the heyday of sugary sports drinks is winding down. 
 
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 Gatorade has controlled the nearly $8 billion US sports drink industry for decades, grabbing about 75% of the market, according to research firm Euromonitor International. The brand has been a boon for Pepsi, which has owned Gatorade since 2001. 
 
 The drink is a fixture of sports sidelines through sponsorships with pro leagues and endorsement deals for global stars, including Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and Lionel Messi. Gatorade's 1991 "Be Like Mike" commercial helped propel the Jordan craze, while Glacier freeze and fruit punch Gatorade baths have become marks of Super Bowl-winning coaches. 
 
 But Gatorade is showing signs of fatigue. Sales ticked down 0.5% last year to $5.9 billion in the United States, according to Euromonitor. The brand lost market share, too. 
 
 Although high on electrolytes that help athletes rehydrate as they sweat, a 20-ounce drink has 34 grams of sugar, 36 grams of carbohydrates, and 140 calories. Health-conscious athletes have grown wary of sweeteners and added carbs. 
 
 "Athletes have heard ad nauseum about the need to hydrate," said Leslie Bonci, a longtime sports dietitian who is currently a consultant for the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs. "They know electrolytes are important, but they are looking for options." 
 
 She said many players are pushing away Gatorade for coconut, sparkling, electrolyte, and flavored waters with natural ingredients and enhanced functional benefits to meet their changing training regimens. 
 
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 Health shifts and the explosion of new drinks and flavors to compete with big brands on store shelves have reshaped the beverage industry. Carbonated soft drink volume sales have fallen 13 years in a row, according to trade publication Beverage Digest. 
 
 "The same trends that emerged within soft drinks in the last decade are revealing themselves in the sports drink market," said Beverage Digest executive editor Duane Stanford. "A growing number of consumers are moderating their sugar intake, and some don't want sugar at all." 
 
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 Gatorade has responded to the trends by expanding its lineup in recent years to give athletes more choices. 
 
 In 2016, it added higher-priced G Organic, which came without artificial coloring and had fewer ingredients and sugar than the traditional version. Last year, it redesigned its G2 low-calorie line to make "lower sugar" stand out on the bottle, Stanford said. 
 
 Those changes have not resonated. "We worry that Gatorade's artificial and sugary ingredient profile (plus lack of awareness on low-sugar versions) has caused its brand image to shift toward being less healthy than alternatives," Barclays analyst Lauren Lieberman said in an April research report. 
 
 Zero is Gatorade's newest play to reach consumers who've turned away from sports drinks. 
 
 "Gatorade Zero will address the large and growing demand by athletes for additional hydration options," Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi told analysts in April. "Zero will give our athletes more flexibility." 
 
 With the new drink, Gatorade will take on Coca Cola's (KO) Powerade Zero for the first time. Coke launched Powerade Zero a decade ago, and it has been a bright spot in the sports hydration market. 
 
 Gatorade Zero could also help the brand fend off BodyArmor, an upstart sports drink that counts Kobe Bryant as a top investor, and markets itself as a "more natural" choice for athletes. 
 
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 BodyArmor's sales grew 78% in 2016 to $235 million as it entered into more stores with the backing of Dr. Pepper Snapple's (DPS) massive US distribution network. 
 
 "They're capitalizing on consumers' desire to try new beverages within well-known categories and also move to natural ingredients and flavors," Stanford said. 
 
 BodyArmor is now targeting Gatorade directly. It's running a new ad campaign featuring James Harden and Mike Trout with the tagline, "Thanks, Gatorade. We'll take it from here." 
 
 "James Harden wouldn't go to the game wearing outdated fashion," says a narrator in the ads. "So why would he choose an outdated sports drink?" 
 
 Pepsi's Nooyi didn't mention BodyArmor on its last earnings call, but she said a "new competitor" had dropped prices and chipped away slightly at Gatorade's market share when it first landed on shelves. 
 
 Yet Gatorade is trying to play the long game. It plans to hold prices steady, even if means temporarily sacrificing share. BodyArmor's sales fell off after initially entering new stores and its lower pricing strategy is "not sustainable in the long term," Nooyi claimed. 
 
 "Gatorade just has to be very responsible and very careful in its response," she said. "It's got to be surgical, and that's what we are doing. We are watching Gatorade shares like a hawk." ||||| LISTEN TO ARTICLE 1:19 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email 
 
 PepsiCo Inc. is introducing a zero-sugar version of Gatorade to woo consumers back to the sports-drink category. 
 
 The new product further expands the Gatorade portfolio, joining organic and low-sugar versions of the beverage, as PepsiCo works to please consumers who have increasingly migrated away from sugar-laden beverages. 
 
 G Zero Source: PepsiCo 
 
 The shift in preferences represents a challenge for brands that rely on sweeteners. Gatorade, which accounts for more than 70 percent of the sports drinks market, is facing pressure from new competitors like coconut water, which boast simpler ingredients. Measured retail sales of sports drinks fell 3.2 percent by volume in 2017, according to Beverage-Digest, a trade publication, which first reported the news on Wednesday. 
 
 While the overall category declined, sports drinks without sugar fared better. Gatorade and Powerade, made by PepsiCo rival Coca-Cola Co., both lost volume in 2017, as Powerade Zero grew, according to Beverage-Digest. 
 
 ‘G Zero,’ as the new Gatorade is called, is the first no-sugar product introduced in Gatorade’s 53-year history. The drink is slated hit shelves across the U.S. in June. The initial flavors include Lemon-Lime, Orange and Glacier Cherry. ||||| SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email 
 
 PepsiCo Inc. is introducing a version of Gatorade that’s certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testing whether a product created in a lab with artificial flavors and colors can adapt to America’s growing natural-food movement. 
 
 After two years of research, the company is now selling strawberry, lemon and mixed berry G Organic in some Kroger Co. supermarkets, said Brett O’Brien, Gatorade’s senior vice president and general manager. It plans to expand the rollout to select grocery, natural and convenience stores over the next few weeks. The suggested retail price for the new drinks is $1.69 for a 16.9-ounce bottle, 50 cents more than for Gatorade Thirst Quencher, the nonorganic equivalent. 
 
 Organic Gatorade Source: Gatorade 
 
 Gatorade, which controls 70 percent of the sports-drink market, is facing increasing pressure from new challengers like coconut water as consumers are focused more than ever on ingredients. Organic food industry sales in the U.S. reached $43.3 billion in 2015, up 11 percent from the year before, while broader food sales gained 3 percent, according to the Organic Trade Association. 
 
 “We heard pretty loud through the locker rooms, through our work with nutritionists, that there is an interest and a desire among athletes to go organic,” O’Brien said in an interview. “Somewhere around 10 to 12 percent of athletes are saying they’re interested in purchasing organic products.” 
 
 To be considered organic, the new Gatorade had to shed artificial ingredients and PepsiCo needed to refine its manufacturing. Every step of the process was approved by the USDA, which aims to ensure organic products are more natural and less harmful to the environment. 
 
 But the introduction of G Organic isn’t without risk. PepsiCo recently faced a backlash after switching sweeteners in Diet Pepsi, forcing the company to reintroduce a version with aspartame less than a year after removing it. While the company isn’t changing ingredients in its flagship product as PepsiCo did with Diet Pepsi, a brand extension of Gatorade -- which already includes low-calorie G2 -- could confuse consumers. 
 
 “In as much as they can focus on the potential to change ingredients without changing the taste, that’s sort of a win-win,” said Adam Fleck, a beverage analyst at Morningstar Inc. “But you have to be very careful about alienating your current customers in a bid to attract lapsed customers or new customers.” 
 
 G Organic, which has seven ingredients, is the first major sports drink to cater to food and beverage customers looking for fewer and more natural components. 
 
 Other types of consumer products have already shifted in that direction: 
 
 Kraft Heinz Co. released an organic version of Capri Sun juice last year and took artificial colors and flavors out of its macaroni and cheese. 
 
 General Mills Inc. has removed artificial ingredients from some cereals. 
 
 Campbell Soup Co. has pledged to make all of its North American products without artificial colors or flavors by the end of fiscal 2018. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Gatorade is contending with a growing list of all-natural competitors that are taking aim at the brand’s market dominance. 
 
 “While sports drinks are still the Michael Phelps of mass hydration, young upstarts like coconut water are taking advantage of health and wellness trends to make a run at the champion,” Duane Stanford, editor-in-chief of Beverage Digest, said in an e-mail. 
 
 For a story on Panera removing artificial ingredients from its kids menu, click here. 
 
 Gatorade was developed in a lab at the University of Florida in 1965 after an assistant coach there asked researchers to look into why his football players -- the Gators -- were suffering from heat-related illnesses like dehydration. 
 
 A single-ingredient product like coconut water benefits from a lack of such engineering. The most difficult part of creating G Organic was getting the amount of electrolytes and carbohydrates to the levels of other Gatorade products without boosting calories, O’Brien said. 
 
 Aspartame Fiasco 
 
 PepsiCo has previously dealt with pressure to change ingredients in Gatorade. It removed brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, from the sports drink after criticism on social media and online forums such as Change.org. Coca-Cola Co. made a similar move with Powerade. The company says removal of BVO wasn’t a result of pressure and had been in the pipeline for some time before the change. 
 
 Listening to consumer criticism doesn’t always pay off. Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo removed aspartame from Diet Pepsi in August 2015 only to reintroduce the original formula -- now called Diet Pepsi Classic Sweetener Blend -- in June. Diet Pepsi’s sales volume fell 5.8 percent in 2015 and dropped about 11 percent at retail during the first quarter of 2016, according to Beverage Digest. The problem: Customers didn’t like the taste of the sucralose-sweetened version. 
 
 G Organic will be sold at first only in single-serve bottles to give people a chance to taste the product, O’Brien said. It has 120 calories per single serving, about the same as in the flagship brand. 
 
 “There’s that misnomer that if it’s organic it can’t taste good, and that’s not the case,” he said. “We’re just trying to get people familiar with the product, what it means, what it does and try it. Once we’ve checked those boxes, we’ve got a big opportunity here.” 
 
 (A previous version of this story was corrected to show that G2 is a low-calorie drink.)
– Is the era of sugary sports drinks coming to an end? Gatorade is launching its new Gatorade Zero this week, a sports drink with no sugar and no carbohydrates. Gatorade has long dominated the sports drink industry, but as health-conscious consumers have begun eschewing sugar, some have soured on the drink—which has 34 grams of sugar per 20 ounces—sending sales down 0.5% last year, CNNMoney reports. Gatorade has previously tried an organic version and a low-calorie version with less sugar. Gatorade Zero, which will be known as G Zero, per Bloomberg, will compete directly with Powerade Zero, a sugar-free sports drink that entered the market 10 years ago.