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Comment by extr | Hacker News Reader

Seems like they would have a lot more to lose as well. A scheme where Red Bull is helping athletes cheat is front page news. It would be catastrophic to their reputation. Much bigger deal than the athlete themselves getting caught.

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A scheme where Red Bull is helping athletes cheat is front page news. It would be catastrophic to their reputation.

Well, either that or it would triple sales overnight. "Hey, this stuff really DOES give you wings!"

They would just funnel it through some other company that they can blame.

In GP's proposed scheme, the sponsor gets punished whether or not it knew or assisted

The sponsor isn't punished when their reputation gets associated with a cheat? US Postal sued Armstrong for $100M (settled for $5M) after he got caught. Guilty by association with a PED athlete is the dominant economic risk of sports sponsoring. At least in sports that have dropped the "just pretend we did not notice" attitude that's still going strong in e.g. football (both of them, I suppose)

I mean we are talking of an overrated "energy drink" that no one actually needs to consume but yet manages to sell billions of dollars worth of every year.

I don't think their target market is that susceptible to reason.

Energy drink is an arbitrary category. Caffeine + sugar + water is the root of a lot more than 1 billion in beverage sales because the combo works.

Energy drinks additionally contain taurine.

Several call themselves energy drinks and don’t like C4 Smart Energy.

At least as far as the Federal Trade Commission is concerned that’s not an issue.

It's good iff you mix it with Vodka.

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