Charlotte’s Web goes to the majors.
Major League Baseball and the Colorado-based hemp and CBD company recently announced that Charlotte’s Web will become the official CBD supplier for the MLB. This is the first partnership between a cannabis brand and one of America’s four major sports leagues, and it’s a big step for a business based on a girl’s story.
Named after Charlotte Figi, a child medical marijuana patient, Charlotte’s Web rose to prominence as a high-CBD strain in the early 2010s. Figi and the strain were featured in Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s CNN documentary Weed, helping sparking U.S. interest and acceptance of CBD, a non-intoxicating compound found in marijuana and hemp. Figi, who died in 2020 at the age of thirteen with symptoms related to COVID-19, suffered from a rare form of epilepsy. However, after being treated with CBD oil extracted from its namesake strain, she no longer needed a feeding tube to eat, and her family reported that CBD had nearly eliminated her seizures.
As Charlotte’s Web gained national prominence, the seven brothers who had developed the strain in Colorado Springs (Josh, Joel, Jesse, Jon, Jordan, Jared and J. Austin Stanley) launched a hemp and CBD company that brought the name of the strain, which became one of the most popular names in the sector.
Now a publicly traded beverage, hemp and CBD company, Charlotte’s Web has faced several challenges along the way, including the feds. The Stanley brothers, who own a separate medical marijuana business, have also had a few bumps in the road during their ascent. The company remains active in the cannabis advocacy space, however, with the Stanley brothers launching a new grant program that gives families a year’s supply of web oil and Charlotte formulated products.
As scientific interest in CBD increased in the late 2010s, the public became aware of the cannabinoid’s potential to treat other diseases and ailments, including joint pain, inflammation, and anxiety. CBD products marketed as sports recovery aids are now one of the most popular subcategories of the CBD industry, but until recently, CBD companies had to seek partners outside of the current roster of major sports leagues.
Charlotte Figi sat for a photo with the seven Stanley brothers before she died.
Web photography/CFD by Charlotte
Although CBD is not yet regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration, that hasn’t stopped the industry from surpassing $4 billion in sales this year, and professional sports are starting to follow the money. Months before MLB became the first major sports league to announce a CBD deal, the National Basketball Player’s Association, responsible for representing the approximately 450 players in the NBA, agreed to a CBD partnership with Harrington Wellness, a CBD company founded by the former Denver Nugget. Al Harrington.
The Big 3, a professional basketball league founded by rapper Ice Cube, also allows partnerships with CBD, as do a handful of smaller professional sports leagues. College athletic programs have also adopted CBD partnerships; the University of Colorado Boulder created a hemp and CBD brand as a sponsor last year.
MLB announced that teams and players could partner with CBD brands in June, but only if the CBD brands were certified for sports by the National Sanitation Foundation, a program that verifies product ingredients and tests levels not safe from contaminants, banned substances or masking agents. Charlotte’s Web has been providing its products for a university study since last year, giving the company a leg up on the NSF checks and balances needed for a partnership with America’s pastime.
“Nature is our world’s most intelligent and technologically advanced system, and when we work with nature for health and innovate through the lens of community care, we can truly redefine what it means to be well as an athlete . This is a game-changer. , and I’m excited about what we can accomplish with the MLB partnership,” Jared Stanley said after the announcement.
If there’s one group of athletes whose diets Americans care about, it’s baseball players. While no one will question home run records because of CBD gummies, it will be interesting to see if and how CBD affects player recovery since MLB players have a 162-game schedule, not counting the playoffs.
“We are excited about the possibilities this partnership holds as CBD becomes a more widely adopted part of the health and wellness regimen of our players and fans,” said Noah Garden, MLB’s chief revenue officer, in a statement announcing the deal.
