Kobe Bryant turns $6 mln into $200 mln in four years

World
Europe

Five-time NBA Championship, legendary player of NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, Kobe Bryant saw an investment made by him in BodyArmor about four years ago grow by over 30 times, reported ESPN on Thursday.

In March 2014, he bought 10 percent of shares of the sports drink company with six million US dollars. Coca-Cola said on Tuesday that it purchased a minority stake of BodyArmor. Based on the valuation of this deal, the shares today are worth some 200 million US dollars, according to ESPN.

Kobe Bryant spent six million dollars buying 10 percent of BodyArmor's shares in 2014. /VCG Photo

The growth has made Bryant the fourth largest shareholder of the company after Mike Repole, co-founder of BodyArmor, Coca-Cola and Keurig Dr. Pepper. Back in 2014 when the former NBA superstar invested his money, BodyArmor had a yearly sales revenue of no more than 10 million US dollars. That number is expected to reach 400 million US dollars in 2018.

Having made about 680 million US dollars from team salaries and other incomes out of the court, according to Tencent Sports, during his 20 years of NBA career, Bryant announced the start of Kobe Inc in 2014 and set up a joint venture investment company that’s worth 100 million US dollars with Jeff Stibel.

After 20 years of career as a legendary NBA player, Bryant is exploring in the business world. /VCG Photo

BodyArmor has investments from multiple athletes besides Bryant. According to ESPN’s sources, James Harden from NBA’s Houston Rockets, US professional golf player Dustin Johnson, American football quarterback Andrew Luck and many others have contributed to more than 100 million US dollars of the stake of the brand.

ESPN said that Coca-Cola’s purchase of BodyArmor’s shares became the biggest news in the business of sports drinks since PepsiCo acquired Quaker Oats, owner of Gatorade, the No.1 sports drink in the US, in December 2000. Thanks to this, Bryant has received the largest return on investments made by modern athletes in the business sector in some time.