when was gatorade first sold to the public
Gatorade Shortly after the 1969 Orange Bowl, Robert Cade entered into an agreement providing Stokely-Van Camp, Inc. (S-VC), a canned-food packaging company, with the U.S. rights to production and sale of Gatorade as a commercial product.[8] In the same year, a licensing arrangement made Gatorade the official sports drink of the National Football League (NFL), representing the first in a history of professional sports sponsorship for the Gatorade brand. A year after its commercial introduction, S-VC tested multiple variations of the original Gatorade recipe, finally settling on more palatable variants in lemon-lime and orange flavors. This reformulation also removed the sweetener cyclamateâ€”which was banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1969 - replacing it with additional fructose.[14] In the early 1970s, legal questions arose regarding whether or not the researchers who invented Gatorade were entitled to ownership of its royalties, since they had been working under a research grant from the federal government which provided financial stipends.[8] The University of Florida also claimed partial rights of ownership, which was brought to resolution in 1973 in the form of a settlement awarding the university with a 20-percent share of Gatorade royalties.[15] As of 2009, the university had received more than $150 million from its share, and was receiving approximately $12 million per year.[16]