⚡️LeBron’s Failed $10M Business: Energy ‘Sheets’

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There will never be another year like 2011.

Osama bin Laden was killed, I looked like this, and LeBron James and Pitbull were trying to sell caffeinated Listerine Strips (more on that later).

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: The Truth Behind the St. Louis Cardinals’ Decline

📉 Biggest Loser: LeBron’s Failed $10M Business: Energy ‘Sheets’

🏆 Winner’s Circle: How the Blue Jays Just Made an Extra $10M+ Overnight

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🗞 The Big Story

The St. Louis Cardinals are currently having one of their worst seasons in team history, but not in the way you might think.

Background: If you were to just look at the box scores, it might seem like everything is back to normal for the 11-time World Series champions. After posting their first losing season in 16 years in 2023, the team bounced back by finishing second in the NL Central last year, and is currently sitting just a few games back from the top of the division this year.

However, for one of MLB’s most historic franchises, things are anything but normal. In fact, according to the team president, the St. Louis Cardinals are in “uncharted territory.”

Drop in Revenue: The Cardinals are one of several MLB franchises that are earning less than they expected this year from their local TV rights deal. In their specific case, the team’s 2025 payment was reduced by about 25% from $78 million after the company that owned Bally Sports filed for bankruptcy in 2023.

This reduction in revenue is one reason that the Cardinals’ president says that the team is focusing on player development instead of signing marquee players who might help drive more attention to the team.

For context, the Cardinals' Opening Day roster payroll ranked 19th in the league, but still, a lack of money to sign star players isn’t even their biggest problem.

Record Low Attendance: After a disappointing offseason in the eyes of many fans, attendance this season is on pace to reach a historic low, with the team averaging just 28,464 fans per game as of May 20.

Even though that still puts them at 13th in the league, it only puts them on pace for about 2.3 million total fans this year, which would be the team’s lowest mark for a full, non-COVID season in 41 years.

📉 Biggest Loser

This is the biggest sports business failure you’ve probably never heard of, but after researching the product, I think it’s actually kind of genius.

Background: Back in 2011, Derrick Rose was the NBA MVP, LeBron was making his first playoff run with the Miami Heat, and 5-Hour Energy was at its peak, selling an estimated $1 billion worth of caffeine shots annually.

That’s when entrepreneur Jesse Itzler had the idea to compete with 5-Hour Energy by making caffeine even easier to consume.

So, he co-founded a company called Sheets Energy Strips with LeBron James. The idea was that each “sheet” would contain 50 milligrams of caffeine, about the equivalent of a Diet Coke, and come individually wrapped in a paper-thin pouch that could be carried around anywhere.

Thanks in large part to Jesse’s previous success as an entrepreneur, he was able to get his Sheets distributed across the country into retailers like:

• Walgreens

• Walmart

• 7-Eleven

Upon launching, Jesse even went on record, claiming that the company would lead a new $1 billion-plus market within the next 3-5 years.

But of course, it didn’t work out that way.

Sheets’ Campaign: When the product hit the shelves in June of 2011, the company launched with a huge $10 million national advertising campaign, which included appearances from Pitbull and LeBron.

As Jesse describes, sales during the first two weeks skyrocketed to the point that he was ready to buy a second house; however, things started going sideways quickly.

5-Hour Energy Controversy: Around the same time, the FDA was investigating 5-Hour Energy for 13 deaths related to the use of their product. This naturally led consumers to become increasingly skeptical of any new caffeinated product on the market.

According to Jesse, this meant that by the fourth week of his $10 million national campaign, sales for Sheets started tanking.

In fact, things got so bad that by September of 2011, Adweek had named Sheets “The Worst Ad Campaign of the Year” just four months after they had launched.

But honestly, I just feel like they were ahead of their time. After all, people are putting way worse things in their mouths these days.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

The Toronto Blue Jays just solved a problem that no other team has, and it’s about to help them earn millions of dollars every single year.

Rogers Centre: Before renovations to the 36-year-old Rogers Centre started in 2022, the venue had never received any significant upgrades. In fact, many experts say that the multipurpose stadium was outdated almost as soon as it opened in 1989, and described it as cavernous, concrete, and devoid of personality.

But that wasn’t even its biggest problem.

That’s because the Rogers Centre was one of the last stadiums ever built to accommodate both football and baseball. This meant that the seats in the lower section were built on a sort of railroad track, allowing them to be rotated to accommodate the seating configurations of different sports.

However, before the renovations started, that mechanical system hadn’t been used in 10 years, but it still consumed a considerable amount of space beneath the stadium’s stands.

$300M Seat Removal: So, as a part of the second phase of a multi-year renovation project, the Blue Jays spent part of their roughly $300 million budget to completely demolish and remove the seats in the lower bowl in order to replace them with a design that’s better suited for baseball.

Not only did this new configuration result in a 3,000 square foot reduction in foul territory, but it also enabled the team to construct three new premium club sections where the mechanical rotating systems used to be located.

In total, the Blue Jays reclaimed more than 20,000 square feet of space, which will now include some of the best premium seating in Major League Baseball.

Significant Revenue Boost: As a result of this renovation, the team says they sold out of the 1,600 total seats on three-to-five-year deals, which range in price from $10,000 CAD per seat on the low end up to $40,000 CAD for the stadium’s most premium offering.

This translates to an immediate 8-figure boost in revenue for the franchise.

📺 What I’m Watching

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

Take a moment today and time travel back to 2011.

Only hits on this playlist.