Prime
Logan Paul and KSI launched a sports drink in January 2022 and hit $1.2 billion in sales by 2023. By 2024, UK revenue had dropped 70%. The drink is not really their company.
In January 2022, Logan Paul and KSI announced Prime Hydration on a joint Instagram livestream, four years after their boxing rivalry had drawn 1.3 million pay-per-view buys. The two YouTubers had a combined audience of more than 40 million YouTube subscribers, and the launch turned that audience into the fastest-rising drink brand in modern beverage history.
By 2023, Prime was generating $1.2 billion in annual sales, surpassing Gatorade in Walmart’s hydration category, and reaching a brand valuation reportedly around $3.2 billion. Logan Paul publicly called it “the fastest-growing hydration beverage in history.” Bottles were reselling on eBay for £100 in the UK and outlier listings reached £1,200 (around $1,500). Aldi UK locations sold out in 30 minutes, with stampedes inside stores and theft serious enough for retailers to lock the bottles in cabinets.
By 2024, UK turnover had collapsed from £112.2 million to £32.8 million, a 70.7% drop, and US sales fell roughly 40% in the first half of the year. Projected 2025 revenue is approximately $300 million, a 76% decline from peak. Brand awareness remains close to 100%, while repeat purchase rates sit at around 12%. The brand most people had heard of in 2023 turned out to be the brand most of them had tried once.
At a glance:
| Founded | January 2022 |
| Public-facing founders | Logan Paul + KSI (Olajide Olatunji) |
| Operators (60% equity) | Max Clemons + Trey Steiger, Congo Brands (Louisville, KY) |
| Peak revenue (2023) | $1.2B |
| Peak valuation (2023) | ~$3.2B (reported) |
| 2025 projected revenue | ~$300M (76% decline from peak) |
| 2024 UK turnover | £32.8M (down 70.7% YoY) |
| 2024 UK net profit | £312,393 (down 91.6% YoY) |
| Brand awareness | Near 100% |
| Repeat purchase rate | ~12% |
The Story
From boxing rivals to business partners
KSI (Olajide Olatunji), a British YouTuber and rapper from Watford, and Logan Paul, an American YouTuber and former Vine star, fought each other twice. The first fight was August 25, 2018 at Manchester Arena, ending in a majority draw, with 1.3 million pay-per-view buys. The rematch came November 9, 2019 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, with KSI winning by split decision and 2 million pay-per-view buys.
The two had built individual YouTube empires before they started fighting, and they kept building them after. By the time they announced Prime on January 4, 2022, their combined YouTube subscriber count was over 40 million. Within their first year, the rivalry-turned-partnership was generating headlines that no traditional beverage launch budget could buy.
The Aldi stampede heard around the world
Prime Hydration launched in the United States in January 2022 through DrinkPrime.com, then rolled into roughly 20,000 US retail doors by late 2022, including Walmart, Target, and Kroger. The UK launch came on December 29, 2022 as an Aldi “Special Buy” priced at £1.99 per bottle.
What happened next defined the brand. Aldi locations across England sold out in under thirty minutes, and the Crawley store had shoppers queued around the block before opening. Prime bottles started appearing in convenience stores at £20 to £60 each, and on eBay at £50 to £100, with extreme outlier listings reaching £1,200. Tesco imposed purchase limits, and some retailers added anti-theft tags to bottles of flavored water because the resale price had outrun what consumers were willing to pay legally.
UK and Australian schools began banning the drinks. Bristol’s Redland Green School pulled Prime from campus, with the head teacher citing both the marketing and the caffeine in the energy variant. The brand’s first major retail moment in the UK was a viral stampede, and it scaled from there.
The operators nobody saw on the YouTube channels
Logan Paul and KSI brought the audience, but the actual product, factory, distribution, and operations were built by Max Clemons and Trey Steiger, two former classmates from Pleasure Ridge High School in Louisville, Kentucky, who had run a beverage company called Congo Brands since 2017. Congo also owns Alani Nu and 3D Energy Drink, both of which had given the operators years of CPG experience by the time Prime launched.
Congo Brands holds 60% of Prime, with Logan and KSI splitting the rest, which means the founders most people associate with the brand are the smaller equity holders. Manufacturing runs through Refresco, while product development runs through Congo. The two YouTubers function more like the brand’s marketing arms than its operational core.
That arrangement is the reason Prime could go from $0 to $1.2 billion in two years. It is also the reason the brand was structurally over-distributed by the time the audience moved on, because the operators were optimizing for retail placement and the founders were optimizing for content moments, and those two strategies stopped reinforcing each other in 2024.
The Strategy
Audience as launch capital
Most beverage startups spend years and millions building enough awareness to get into Walmart. Prime started with built-in awareness on day one, because Logan Paul and KSI had spent the better part of a decade reaching the same demographic that buys energy drinks: teenage and young adult men. The launch effectively converted parasocial trust into shelf-pull demand at a speed no traditional CPG playbook could match.
The same audience that watched Logan KO another YouTuber on Saturday was buying a sports drink with his face on it on Sunday. By late 2022, Prime was the sixth-largest sports drink brand in the United States by sales, and the sixth-place finish came inside one calendar year.
Sports partnerships at every tier
Prime spent the back half of 2022 and all of 2023 buying its way into every major spectator sport. Arsenal Football Club signed on as Prime’s first major sports partner in July 2022, lending instant credibility in the UK. The UFC followed in early 2023 as the official sports drink supplier, with Dana White personally endorsing on camera. FC Barcelona, replacing Gatorade, signed on in July 2023, followed by Bayern Munich and the LA Dodgers.
The partnerships peaked with WWE in March 2024, where Prime became the first center-ring mat sponsor in the company’s history and signed on for every premium live event from WrestleMania XL onward. By the time the brand had signed all of those deals, it was already in decline, and the partnerships started looking less like a rocket-fuel launch sequence and more like a brand trying to hold on to its visibility with cash.
Scarcity, then sudden over-distribution
Prime’s early playbook was scarcity. Limited drops, online-only sales, the Aldi “Special Buy” model. The scarcity built the resale market that built the press coverage that built the brand. The operators behind Congo Brands were running a different play, expanding into 47 markets, signing every grocery and convenience chain that would take the product, and producing inventory at industrial volume.
The two strategies stopped fitting together in 2024. By the time consumers could buy Prime at any gas station, the original scarcity-driven appeal had vanished, and retailers were left holding inventory that was no longer pulling through. UK shops were marking down bottles to clear stock, and by mid-2024, Marketing Week was reporting UK profits down more than 90% year over year.
The Marketing
The drop model that broke its own audience
Prime’s marketing engine ran on the specific dopamine of a drop. Limited bottles, mystery flavors, surprise retailer launches, ringside moments at boxing matches and WWE events. The brand treated every product release as a content moment for Logan and KSI to post, and the YouTube videos covering the drops drove the next wave of demand.
The drop model worked as long as supply was scarce. It stopped working when Congo Brands’ aggressive expansion strategy put bottles into 47 markets, and by 2024 the bottles were no longer hard to find. The audience that lined up for Prime in 2023 had moved on by 2024, while retailers were still ordering against the prior year’s velocity, and the inventory glut accelerated the price collapse.
The first creator-led brand in a Super Bowl ad
Prime aired a Super Bowl commercial in 2024, becoming the first creator-led beverage brand to do so. The spot was a marker of how far the category had come in two years, since the same cultural slot had been held for decades by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Budweiser, and Doritos. It was also a marker of how much the brand was now spending on traditional advertising compared to the early scarcity model that built it.
When a brand built on parasocial intimacy starts buying Super Bowl spots, the underlying engine has shifted. The first three years of Prime ran on Logan and KSI showing up on YouTube. The fourth year started running on the same playbook everyone else uses.
The Numbers
| Year | Revenue | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | ~$250M | First year, post-launch |
| 2023 | $1.2B | Peak, surpassed Gatorade in Walmart’s hydration category |
| 2024 | UK -70.7%, US -40% H1 | Sharp decline begins |
| 2025 | ~$300M projected | 76% drop from 2023 peak |
The brand peaked at a reported valuation of approximately $3.2 billion in 2023. By 2024, repeat purchase rates had fallen to around 12% even as brand awareness remained close to 100%, the kind of split that signals trial-driven sales rather than habitual purchase. Sports drink market share peaked above 41% in some categories, then fell to 10.4% by 2024, and the energy drink share never broke 0.31%.
The brand has not announced a sale or restructuring as of mid-2025. Congo Brands continues to run the operational backbone, and Logan and KSI remain attached as the public face. No public statement has confirmed whether Prime is being repositioned or wound down.
Controversies
The caffeine that drew Senator Schumer
Prime Energy, the caffeinated variant launched in 2022, contained 200 milligrams of caffeine per 12-ounce can, more than double the caffeine in a Red Bull and roughly six times that of a Coca-Cola. In July 2023, Senator Chuck Schumer wrote a public letter to the FDA calling for an investigation, describing Prime as “a cauldron of caffeine masquerading as a fruit drink” and citing the brand’s marketing reach to children.
The FDA acknowledged the letter and said it might collaborate with the FTC on Prime’s marketing claims. A class action filed in April 2024 alleged that 12-ounce cans of Prime Energy actually contained 215 to 225 milligrams of caffeine, exceeding even the labeled amount, and the case alleges damages on behalf of all US purchasers.
Canada banned the energy line
In July 2023, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency recalled Prime Energy after Health Canada determined that 200 milligrams of caffeine per serving exceeded the country’s 180-milligram limit. Prime Hydration, the non-caffeinated version, remained on Canadian shelves. UK and Australian schools began removing both products from campus around the same time, citing a combination of caffeine concerns and aggressive marketing toward children.
PFAS allegations and class action
In August 2023, a class action filed in California (Castillo v. Prime Hydration) alleged that grape Prime Hydration contained PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals,” at levels approximately three times the FDA’s drinking water threshold. Prime responded that the PFAS allegations referred to the bottle material rather than the liquid itself, and a federal court later dismissed most of the claims. A separate caffeine misrepresentation suit, filed by Lara Vera in April 2024, remains active.
What You Can Learn
An audience can launch a brand without sustaining one. Logan Paul and KSI converted parasocial trust into $1.2 billion in sales inside two years. The same audience moved on by 2024, and the brand’s repeat purchase rate of around 12% revealed that trial had been doing all the work that loyalty was supposed to do later. A celebrity launch is the strongest accelerant in modern CPG, but it is not, by itself, a moat.
The operators are the business. Most coverage of Prime treats it as Logan and KSI’s drink, but the company that runs it is Congo Brands, which holds 60% of the equity and built the manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain that turned the YouTube launch into a billion-dollar brand. A founder with the audience and no operator behind her builds a viral product, and a founder with the operator and no audience builds an unknown one. Both are necessary, and the equity should reflect the contribution.
Scarcity and over-distribution are the same strategy in two different timeframes. The Aldi stampede built Prime’s mythology, then 47-market expansion ate it. A brand built on scarcity has to plan for the inflection point where supply catches demand, because that is the point where the original story stops working and the operators have to introduce a second one. Prime tried to do both at once, and the math collapsed in 2024.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who founded Prime?
Prime was launched by Logan Paul, an American YouTuber, and KSI (Olajide Olatunji), a British YouTuber, in January 2022, four years after the two had fought each other twice in pay-per-view boxing matches. The operational company behind the brand, Congo Brands, was founded in 2017 by Max Clemons and Trey Steiger and runs product development, manufacturing, and distribution.
How much did Prime make at its peak?
Prime generated approximately $250 million in revenue in 2022 and $1.2 billion in 2023, with a reported brand valuation of approximately $3.2 billion at the peak. Prime briefly surpassed Gatorade in Walmart’s hydration category. By 2024, UK turnover had fallen 70.7% and US sales had dropped roughly 40% in the first half of the year, with 2025 revenue projected at approximately $300 million.
Why did Prime decline so quickly?
Three factors stacked. Brand awareness reached near 100% but repeat purchase rates stayed around 12%, indicating trial-driven sales without habitual purchase. The drop and scarcity model that built the brand stopped working once Congo Brands expanded into 47 markets and saturated retail. The caffeine controversies, school bans, and Canada recall added regulatory and reputation drag, and competing products copied the format quickly.
What is the difference between Prime Hydration and Prime Energy?
Prime Hydration is a non-caffeinated sports drink with electrolytes, BCAAs, and coconut water, marketed for general hydration. Prime Energy is a separate product launched later, with 200 milligrams of caffeine per 12-ounce can, marketed as an energy drink. The caffeine controversies and Canada recall apply to Prime Energy, not Prime Hydration.
Who actually owns Prime?
Congo Brands, the Louisville-based beverage company run by Max Clemons and Trey Steiger, holds approximately 60% of Prime. Logan Paul and KSI split the remaining 40%. Congo handles manufacturing, distribution, and product development, while Logan and KSI function as the public-facing co-founders and the brand’s primary marketing engine.
When was Prime founded?
Prime Hydration launched in January 2022, announced by Logan Paul and KSI on a joint Instagram livestream four years after their pay-per-view boxing rivalry. The operational company behind it, Congo Brands, was founded in 2017 by Max Clemons and Trey Steiger and had already built Alani Nu and 3D Energy Drink before Prime.
What is Prime’s net worth?
Prime reached a reported brand valuation of approximately $3.2 billion at its 2023 peak, when annual sales hit $1.2 billion. By 2025, projected revenue had fallen to roughly $300 million, a 76% drop from peak, and no updated valuation has been publicly disclosed since the decline began.
Where is Prime made?
Prime is manufactured by Refresco, a global beverage co-packer, with product development run through Congo Brands in Louisville, Kentucky. The brand is sold in roughly 47 markets worldwide, though the bulk of sales come from the United States and the United Kingdom.
Sources
- Bloomberg, “Prime Drinks From Logan Paul, KSI Set to Pass $1.2 Billion in Sales,” Nov 8, 2023. Peak revenue, brand valuation, Walmart hydration category.
- Marketing Week, “Prime profits fall by over 90% as sales continue to plummet”. UK turnover and profit collapse in 2024.
- Marketing Week, “Prime sees sales fall by almost 50% in 2024”. H1 2024 US sales decline.
- Fortune, “The meteoric rise and stunning fall of Prime, Logan Paul’s energy drink that was once resold for almost $1,500 a can,” April 2024. Resale prices, decline narrative.
- Wikipedia, “Prime (drink)”. Founding timeline, product specifications, controversy chronology.
- Express & Star, “What are Prime Drinks? Aldi sells out of hydration drink causing social media storm,” Dec 2022. Aldi launch, stampede details.
- Senate Democratic Leadership press release, July 9, 2023. Schumer’s letter to the FDA on caffeine content.
- CNN, “Canada recalls six energy drinks, including Prime Energy, for caffeine and labeling violations,” July 2023. Canadian recall details.
- Food Republic, “The Strange Question Of Ownership Behind Prime Hydration”. Congo Brands ownership structure.
- The Grocer, “Carbonates & energy drinks 2024: Prime sales slump £63m”. UK sales decline.
- Arthnova, “Logan Paul and KSI Prime Hydration: $1.3B to $300M in 3 Years, 76% Crash”. 2025 revenue projection, market share decline.
- BevNET, “Logan Paul’s PRIME Hydration Looks to Powders, Energy & International Expansion,” 2022. Distribution growth, Sticks launch.
- Dexerto, “Prime Hydration becomes official hydration sponsor of FC Barcelona”. Sports partnership details.
- SportsMint Media, “PRIME becomes exclusive official hydration drink partner of WWE”. WWE partnership details.