Half of UK adults now use sports nutrition products, indicating that the category has moved beyond the confines of the gym into the mainstream market. Yet online selling hasn’t always been a smooth ride. Now, however, one key supplier is upping the ante to outpace the rest of the field and show how e-commerce should be done.
The sports nutrition market is booming.
Once a niche category, serving largely professional athletes and dedicated fitness enthusiasts, sports nutrition has become a mainstream business. Millions of UK consumers interested in health and wellness, from busy mums to young influencers, regularly tuck into protein bars, add creatine powder to supplement regimes, or sample sachets of electrolytes in their water bottles. As such, sports nutrition is now reaching demographics it never targeted before.
In fact, according to Mintel, half of UK adults now use sports nutrition products, with Market Data Forecast also predicting the market value will nearly double to £3.9bn ($5.3bn) by 2034.
These shoppers aren’t browsing the aisles of supermarkets, health stores or pharmacies for products, though. Instead, they’re buying online, with 60% e-commerce penetration in the category in Western Europe, according to Euromonitor International, reaching the highest levels in consumer health and miles ahead of many consumer goods categories.
At Glanbia Performance Nutrition (GPN), that insight has set the course for its brand Optimum Nutrition’s biggest year to date, with revenue growth of 19.2% in 2025 off the back of an optimised e-commerce plan that has seen the Irish supplier harness data, capture trends and win loyalty.
Cutting through the competition
“Sports nutrition has been booming over the last couple of years, it’s absolutely flying,” says Robbie Campbell, key account manager at GPN. “And e-commerce presents significant opportunities for rapid scaling off the back of that. But on the flipside of that growth is a lot of competition.”
Campbell’s viewpoint is rooted in some solid data. The UK leads the charge in Europe when it comes to new product launches in sports nutrition, accounting for 16% of the total number in 2024, according to Innova, with a steady stream of established brands and start-ups all looking to get a piece of the action. The number of subcategories is also increasing, with formats that now span bars, gummies, powders, pills and more, incorporating an ever-growing laundry list of trending ingredients.
“Sports nutrition has been booming over the last couple of years, it’s absolutely flying”
– Robbie Campbell, key account manager, Glanbia Performance Nutrition
To stand out, GPN has focused on some fundamental tenets of building brand loyalty in its e-commerce strategy, explains Campbell. That has included working closely and collaboratively with online stores like Amazon to ensure optimal visibility and availability, that listings tick every box, and fulfilment is reliable.
It has also meant harnessing the huge amounts of real-time data Amazon provides, as Campbell explains: “We work with their operations team to ensure that we have weeks of full coverage and that our product availability is really good. We also use the store’s support to manage our wide selection of products accurately, safely and in compliance.”
Major online shopping events, such as Black Friday, have also presented golden opportunities to optimise visibility further, with event weeks all featuring in GPN’s top 10 sales weeks on the site. This year’s Prime Day even contributed to the Optimum Nutrition brand recording its first £1m+ revenue week, reveals Campbell.
Meanwhile, over the last six months, the brand owner has also invested significantly in Amazon’s Subscribe & Save option as another route to long-term loyalty, a tool which allows shoppers to sign up for regular deliveries, often at a discount price. “It ensures that customers are coming back to us,” he adds. “It takes some of the pressure off marketing purely on price and gives us added confidence around customer retention.”
Levelling the playing field for visibility online
If, at times, a supplier with the scale of GPN has struggled to cut through the competition in the sports nutrition market, where does that leave the plethora of small brands vying for attention in the crowded category?
Online provides smaller brands with a far more level playing field when it comes to product reach and visibility, says Peter Masters, director of EU grocery & everyday essentials at Amazon. “It’s an excellent route for smaller brands to quickly get in front of a large number of customers, because when a product goes online, it has massive visibility,” he adds. “There are huge numbers of customers looking at our products, which in a traditional store space may never be seen or may never even make it into the store in the first place.”
There’s also a relatively low cost to entry, he adds, and access to the same data as household names, allowing brands to understand how their products are performing easily. “Straight away you can react and change things, putting promotions on products or reacting to customer feedback,” he says. “That’s very exciting for smaller brands.”
Nailing innovation
Perhaps the biggest advantage of scaling online in a rapidly evolving category has been the pace of new product development (NPD).
GPN launched no less than 28 products on Amazon in 2025 alone – an unthinkable number in most traditional retail channels but one that has allowed the team to keep up with constantly changing trends, testing and iterating products in response to early customer feedback. Launches have experimented with new trending flavours in whey proteins, as well as viral ingredients, including new Creatine Plus and a Clear Whey + Collagen SKU launched under its Optimum Nutrition brand.
“One of the real benefits of e-commerce is that you’re not limited in catalogue and shelf space,” says Campbell. “The other is just how quick the turnaround is between the initial idea for NPD, going through the gate processes that we have, and then launching it on-site. The turnaround is so much faster relative to a grocery retailer.
“On top of that, you have the ability to test and learn,” he adds. “You can refine what the NPD is via Amazon reviews. It allows for rapid iteration and response to customer feedback almost in real time.” A/B trialling online, via two different scenarios, also allows the brand owner to test the conversion rates of elements such as product titles and imagery to optimise assets as they go.
In addition, Amazon acts as an inbuilt trends tracker, enabling GPN to use data on frequent or growing search areas and understand which types of products or ingredients are likely to set the sports nutrition sector abuzz in the coming months. “It helps bridge that gap between the consumer research stage and the trial purchase, because Amazon effectively doubles as a search engine.”
“Brands can get real-time feedback, and that’s super-powerful – particularly in a climate where consumer preferences are shifting very rapidly”
– Peter Masters, director of EU grocery & everyday essentials, Amazon
Endless aisle, endless innovation opportunities
If retail buyers in bricks-and-mortar stores are inevitably constrained by shelf space, online platforms have no such constraints. For brands, that means almost endless opportunities to innovate.
“One of the biggest advantages of e-commerce is that brands can test new products at incredibly fast speeds, and at a lower risk as well, because they’re not committing to any large minimum order quantities,” says Masters. “You don’t have to spend a huge amount of time negotiating for what is relatively limited shelf space. Nor do you have to go back and commit to very large volume runs before you know that the product is going to work and that it resonates with the customers you’re trying to serve.”
Online provides almost instant feedback, and Masters says he’s heard of some brands gathering early reviews and using the feedback to completely go back to the drawing board.
“Brands can get real-time feedback, and that’s super-powerful – particularly in a climate where consumer preferences are shifting very rapidly, and what may have been a great product six or 12 months ago, may not now hit the right notes. Online feedback allows you to change that quickly, shortening the path from product development to customer availability. It allows brands to respond to trends in real time and get ahead of the curve.”
The halo effect
GPN’s track record on e-commerce in the last few years speaks for itself, with its frontrunner Optimum Nutrition achieving revenue growth of 49% since 2022. But the benefits transcend a single platform, believes Campbell. “The scale of visibility that we have on Amazon – and the strong presence we’ve built there – helps reinforce our brand credibility more broadly.”
In simple terms, it means that any consumer searching for, say, whey protein on Google will likely be presented with options from GPN’s portfolio because of its visibility and product placement on Amazon, surfacing the brand regardless of where that shopper may end up making the final transaction.
Campbell is unequivocal that for brands looking to cut through in the ultra-competitive sports nutrition market, investment in their e-commerce offer is a no-brainer. “You can’t afford to be invisible online if you want to resonate with those audiences. That’s where the sports nutrition consumer is, that’s where they’re shopping.” And that’s where suppliers need to be too.
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