Gatorade discontinues Tiger Woods line

Posted Dec 8th 2009 4:45PM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: PepsiCo (PEP), Business of Sports

Officials for Gatorade, a division of PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP), officials told CNBC today that it will discontinue its "Tiger Woods"-branded line of Focus Gatorade products.

But don't worry. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with the whole SUV crashing/golf club beating/multiple mistresses scandal. In a statement to CNBC, the company noted that "We decided several months ago to discontinue Gatorade Tiger Focus along with some other products to make room for our planned series of innovative products in 2010. We hope to share more about our 2010 plans soon."

In PepsiCo's defense, Beverage Digest reported on the rumored discontinuation on November 25th, two days before Woods' car accident.

Nevertheless, the timing couldn't be better: Gatorade can avoid the problem of having to either hawk the Gatorade with Woods' mug on it or publicly dump him by saying, with some evidence to back up the claim, that the scandal was unrelated to the marketing decision.

Tags: Gatorade, PEP, PepsiCo, Tiger Woods, TigerWoods