Why Drip is trying to become the ‘Water of Sport’

“It’s almost an entertainment company that happens to sell water.”

For co-founder Luke Davis, water brand Drip is just as much a branded content company as it is a water one. The bottled water business was launched in 2023 by social media and TV star Big Zuu alongside Davis and others, and has since made sport content a key area for growth.

“You’ve got this brand that’s super cool,” Davis told Broadcast Sport. “And I thought you could do so much more with this. You could become mainstream. It could potentially become the water of sport.

“No one has really owned that space. Obviously, you’ve got Evian with a Wimbledon contract, but no one’s thinking Evian’s cool because they’re associated with Wimbledon. It’s just not a lifestyle brand.”

This grand aim has begun with partnerships with Matchroom Boxing in the UK and UFC in the US, the first of which was helped by Davis’ connections with Barry and Eddie Hearn.

Davis said, “Drip is about being drippy, isn’t it? It is about your fit. It’s about what you’re wearing. It’s about what you’re saying about yourself, so I thought boxing, being a ‘cool’ sport, was a good place to start. Then UFC is that on steroids, basically.”

In addition, “UFC happened in America because it’s got global reach. It costs a lot of money, but you can do national deals straight off the back of the UFC because the brand is so strong.

“With boxing in the UK, it crosses many demographics. It’s the whole range. It’s very, very diverse. That’s where you want to be when you’re building a brand. You don’t want to be pigeonholed.”

Another reason to target combat sport has been that water can be front and centre when the sport is actually happening, Davis revealed, “The sports stars aren’t drinking the products that they’re sponsored by. With the UFC, for example, and their big Monster partnership, no one’s drinking Monster before or after the fight. It’s water.”

Drip has been able to capitalise on this in its own content, which is being created fully in-house and spearheaded by Davis’ fellow co-founder Matt Dodds. “That’s really part of the DNA of the business,” Davis believes, and the company needs to stay close to the content it’s creating on the ground. “You can’t sit in a board room and just create a brand like this. No one’s going to believe you. It’s not going to feel authentic.”

That authenticity stretches to the types of partners they want in their content, Davis said. “You wouldn’t do an NFL deal, for example. It’d just be a massive waste of money, and you’re not going to come off cool. You do a deal with an NFL star.

“The same with the NBA. You’d never do a league deal. It’s too corporate, it’s going to cost you a fortune, and you’re not really going to get the ROI on it. But if you get a really cool NBA or NFL player, that’s a whole different thing.”

While Drip is a British company, the US is a big target and Davis believes adapting content to the American market is vital. “I think a lot of people forget this because they speak English in America. It’s literally a whole different world when you’re trying to launch a brand in America. Americans only want to deal with Americans.

“If you go over there as a bunch of arrogant English people thinking that your brand is just going to work over there, it isn’t. You have to be very, very conscious of it.”

Whether it’s the US or the UK or beyond, Davis still has his eyes on sport content for the brand, beginning with owning the combat sport space, “Let’s own combat sport, then you move on from there. Otherwise, with activations and everything it could get a bit diluted, but the end game is to be all sport.”