Legion Athletics AI Visibility Market Strategy Report - Sports Nutrition and Protein Supplements

Answer Capsule

Legion Athletics holds a small but genuine recommendation pocket in the October 2026 LLM Authority Index benchmark for sports nutrition and protein supplements, with a valid recommendation coverage of 15.32% and a top-three rate of 8.09%. The brand is visible but under-recommended relative to the two category leaders, Optimum Nutrition and Transparent Labs, which both reach 75.14% top-three rates. Legion Athletics converts its appearances into positive framing at a high rate, with a net sentiment score of 0.964, but it rarely reaches the first recommendation position, holding a rank-one rate of just 0.72%. The clearest opportunity sits in the single measured buyer-intent cluster, where the brand is shortlisted far less often than it is mentioned.

Who This Report Is For

This report is for Legion Athletics leadership, brand, and growth teams evaluating how the brand is discovered and recommended inside AI and search surfaces, and for category analysts tracking recommendation-stage visibility in sports nutrition and protein supplements.

Report Card

Executive Summary

Legion Athletics is present in the sports nutrition and protein supplements category but is not yet a default recommendation. Across 692 qualified observations in October 2026, the brand was named in 16.04% of answers and appeared in a valid recommendation shortlist in 15.32%, a narrow gap that shows the brand is usually mentioned in a recommendation context rather than as passing context. That is a healthier pattern than brands such as GNC, which is named in 28.61% of observations but recommended in only 4.05%.

The brand's framing quality is strong. Legion Athletics recorded 107 positive mentions, 4 neutral mentions, and 0 negative mentions, producing a net sentiment score of 0.964. Only Transparent Labs, at 0.9812, recorded a higher net sentiment score in the vertical. This suggests AI systems describe the brand favorably when they surface it.

The clearest weakness is placement at the top of the list. Legion Athletics holds an 8.09% top-three rate and a 0.72% rank-one rate, meaning it is shortlisted in roughly one in twelve qualified observations and named first in fewer than one in a hundred. By comparison, Optimum Nutrition and Transparent Labs both hold 75.14% top-three rates, and Dymatize holds a 60.12% top-three rate. The brand is being considered, but it is not being chosen first.

The strongest platform signal for Legion Athletics is Perplexity, where the brand recorded a 28.09% valid recommendation coverage and a 24.72% top-three rate, the highest of any tracked platform for the brand. Gemini also performed above the brand's overall average, with a 12.94% valid recommendation coverage. The weakest platform signal is ChatGPT, where the brand recorded a 4.92% valid recommendation coverage and no rank-one placements.

The clearest platform gap is Copilot, where Legion Athletics holds an 18.07% valid recommendation coverage but a rank-one rate of just 1.20%, and Google AI Overviews, where the brand holds a 13.23% valid recommendation coverage with a 0.53% rank-one rate. Both surfaces show the brand being shortlisted without being elevated to the first position.

The single measured buyer-intent cluster, Best Sports Nutrition and Protein Supplements, carries all 692 qualified observations. Pricing and comparison clusters carry no qualified observations in the public benchmark, so the report cannot yet speak to how Legion Athletics performs on cost or head-to-head tradeoff questions.

What Legion Athletics Is Winning

Questions This Section Answers

• Where does Legion Athletics' net sentiment score rank against other sports nutrition brands?
• Which platforms show Legion Athletics converting AI visibility into top-three recommendation placement?
• How does Legion Athletics' presence-to-recommendation conversion compare to brands like GNC, BSN, and Muscle Milk?

Legion Athletics holds the highest net sentiment score among the mid-tier brands in the vertical. At 0.964, the brand trails only Transparent Labs (0.9812) and sits ahead of Dymatize (0.941), Optimum Nutrition (0.9403), and Isopure (0.8689). The brand recorded zero negative mentions across 692 qualified observations, which is a meaningful signal of framing quality.

The brand also shows a strong presence-to-recommendation conversion. Legion Athletics was named in 16.04% of qualified observations and recommended in 15.32%, a conversion ratio of roughly 95%. That is a narrower presence-to-recommendation gap than GNC, BSN, or Muscle Milk, all of which are named far more often than they are recommended.

Perplexity is the brand's strongest platform. Legion Athletics recorded a 28.09% valid recommendation coverage and a 24.72% top-three rate on Perplexity, along with a 3.37% rank-one rate. This is the only platform where the brand approaches the top-tier placement rates seen from Optimum Nutrition and Transparent Labs across the full benchmark.

The brand also holds a meaningful recommendation pocket on Gemini, where it recorded a 12.94% valid recommendation coverage and a 4.71% top-three rate. These two platforms together represent the clearest evidence that Legion Athletics can convert AI visibility into shortlist placement when the surface and prompt context align.

Where Legion Athletics Has the Clearest AI Visibility Gaps

Questions This Section Answers

• Why is Legion Athletics shortlisted so often but rarely named first in AI recommendations?
• Which platform represents the largest structural gap in Legion Athletics' recommendation coverage?
• What does Legion Athletics' concentration in a single buyer-intent cluster mean for the benchmark's ability to measure its performance?

The clearest gap is rank-one placement. Legion Athletics holds a 0.72% rank-one rate across the full benchmark, meaning the brand is named as the single first recommendation in fewer than one in a hundred qualified observations. Optimum Nutrition holds a 41.62% rank-one rate and Transparent Labs holds a 36.99% rank-one rate. Even Dymatize, which holds a similar top-three rate to the leaders, records a 5.06% rank-one rate. Legion Athletics is being shortlisted but not elevated.

The second gap is top-three placement relative to the brand's presence. Legion Athletics is named in 16.04% of qualified observations but reaches a top-three position in only 8.09%. That means roughly half of the brand's appearances are shortlist-adjacent rather than shortlist-eligible. By contrast, Transparent Labs converts 84.39% presence into a 75.14% top-three rate, and Optimum Nutrition converts 89.60% presence into a 75.14% top-three rate. The conversion gap is the clearest structural weakness.

The third gap is platform concentration. Legion Athletics performs well on Perplexity and Gemini but is nearly absent from ChatGPT, where the brand recorded a 4.92% valid recommendation coverage and no rank-one placements. ChatGPT carries the largest single-platform opportunity pool in the benchmark, and the brand's weak position there limits its overall recommendation coverage.

The fourth gap is cluster concentration. All 692 qualified observations fall into the Best Sports Nutrition and Protein Supplements cluster. The brand has no measured presence in comparison or pricing clusters, which means the benchmark cannot yet show whether Legion Athletics wins or loses when buyers ask head-to-head or value-focused questions.

Biggest Opportunity

Questions This Section Answers

• Which AI surfaces show Legion Athletics being shortlisted but not elevated to the first recommendation?
• Why is ChatGPT the most significant structural opportunity for Legion Athletics to close?

The clearest opportunity for Legion Athletics is to convert its existing shortlist appearances into rank-one recommendations. The brand already holds a 15.32% valid recommendation coverage and a 0.964 net sentiment score, which means AI systems are willing to name the brand and frame it positively. The missing step is elevation to the first position.

This opportunity is concentrated on Copilot and Google AI Overviews, where the brand holds 18.07% and 13.23% valid recommendation coverage respectively but rank-one rates of only 1.20% and 0.53%. Both surfaces show the brand being shortlisted without being chosen first. Closing that gap on even one of these surfaces would move the brand's overall rank-one rate materially, because the brand's current rank-one base is so small.

The second part of the opportunity is ChatGPT. The brand's 4.92% valid recommendation coverage on ChatGPT is the lowest of any platform where it has meaningful presence. ChatGPT carries the largest single-platform opportunity pool in the benchmark, and the brand's near-absence there is a structural gap rather than a framing problem.

Competitive Landscape

Questions This Section Answers

• Where does Legion Athletics rank in top-three and rank-one rates compared to Optimum Nutrition, Transparent Labs, and Dymatize?
• How does Legion Athletics' sentiment score compare to its placement in the competitive table?

Optimum Nutrition and Transparent Labs hold recommendation-stage strength in the sports nutrition and protein supplements category, with Dymatize as a stable third. Legion Athletics sits in the mid-tier, behind Isopure on top-three rate but ahead of MuscleTech, Kaged, BSN, GNC, and Muscle Milk.

Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only.

Legion Athletics sits fifth by top-three rate and fifth by rank-one rate, with an average recommended rank of 3.4020 when it does receive rank credit. The brand's sentiment score of 0.9640 is the second highest in the table, ahead of every brand except Transparent Labs. The table shows a brand with strong framing and weak placement: Legion Athletics is described well when it appears, but it appears in a top-three position far less often than the leaders and almost never in the first position.

Prompt Evidence

Questions This Section Answers

• Which prompts show Legion Athletics succeeding or failing to reach the first recommendation position?
• How does the brand's performance on the 'most recommended protein powder' query on Perplexity differ from its performance on ChatGPT?

Perplexity / Best Sports Nutrition and Protein Supplements Prompt: "Which is the most recommended protein powder?" Result: Legion Athletics appeared in a valid recommendation shortlist with a top-three placement, consistent with the brand's strongest platform signal.

ChatGPT / Best Sports Nutrition and Protein Supplements Prompt: "Which protein powder brand is best?" Result: Legion Athletics was largely absent from the recommendation set, consistent with the brand's 4.92% valid recommendation coverage on ChatGPT.

Google AI Overviews / Best Sports Nutrition and Protein Supplements Prompt: "What is the best protein powder for diabetics?" Result: Legion Athletics appeared in the recommendation set but was not elevated to the first position, consistent with the brand's 0.53% rank-one rate on AI Overviews.

Copilot / Best Sports Nutrition and Protein Supplements Prompt: "Which brand of creatine is most effective?" Result: Legion Athletics was shortlisted but not named first, consistent with the brand's 18.07% valid recommendation coverage and 1.20% rank-one rate on Copilot.

What CiteWorks Studio Would Do Next

Phase 1: AI Visibility Market Discovery Audit Map the specific prompts where Legion Athletics is shortlisted but not elevated, and identify which competitor takes the first position in each case.

Phase 2: Recommendation Readiness Plan Prioritize the Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and ChatGPT surfaces where the brand's rank-one rate is lowest relative to its shortlist presence.

Phase 3: Owned Answer Layer Buildout Strengthen the brand's owned pages so that product, ingredient, and use-case answers are structured for direct retrieval by AI systems.

Phase 4: Citation / Authority Layer Development Build the third-party evidence layer, including review sites, retailer pages, and editorial sources, that AI systems appear to draw on when forming recommendations.

Phase 5: Monthly AI Visibility and Recommendation Tracking Track rank-one rate, top-three rate, and sentiment by platform each month to confirm whether the brand is moving from shortlist to first position.

Why This Matters

Questions This Section Answers

• Why is being shortlisted without being chosen first a commercial gap rather than a visibility gap?
• What specific layers does the report say need correction to improve Legion Athletics' rank-one rate?

AI presence alone is not enough. Legion Athletics is already named in 16.04% of qualified observations and framed positively in nearly all of them, but it reaches the first recommendation position in fewer than one in a hundred. In a category where buyers increasingly ask AI systems for a single best answer, being shortlisted without being chosen first is a commercial gap, not a visibility gap.

The next move is targeted correction of the prompt, page, and citation layers that sit behind the brand's rank-one rate. The benchmark shows where the brand is winning and losing. The work is to close the specific gaps on Copilot, Google AI Overviews, and ChatGPT that keep Legion Athletics in the shortlist rather than at the top of it.

Core Metrics

Sentiment Score

Sentiment Score = (positive mentions × 1 + neutral mentions × 0 + negative mentions × -1) / total mentions

For Legion Athletics in October 2026, that is (107 × 1 + 4 × 0 + 0 × -1) / 111, which produces a net sentiment score of 0.9640.

This matters because unclassified mention counts are misleading. A brand that is named 111 times but framed negatively is in a very different position from a brand that is named 111 times and framed positively. Legion Athletics sits in the second group, with zero negative mentions across the benchmark.

Share of voice is a diagnostic metric, not a business KPI. A positive recommendation, a neutral reference, a cautionary mention, and a competitor-displaced mention are not equal. Counting all mentions as wins is bad measurement, because it treats a passing reference the same as a first-position recommendation. Classified sentiment is required before interpreting AI visibility, and for Legion Athletics the classified picture is favorable: the brand is described well when it appears.

Sentiment by Platform

Methodology

1. This report is a benchmark-based analysis of Legion Athletics within the sports nutrition and protein supplements category, produced from the October 2026 LLM Authority Index measurement.
2. The reporting month is October 2026, with comparison points drawn from the August 2026 and September 2026 measurements where the source data provides them.
3. Six AI and search surface families were tracked: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. Keyword variants were rolled up into their parent surface families.
4. The October 2026 measurement began with 800 prompt-surface observations and produced 692 qualified observations after relevance screening and qualification.
5. The competitor universe contains 10 tracked brands: Optimum Nutrition, Transparent Labs, Dymatize, Isopure, Legion Athletics, MuscleTech, Kaged, BSN, GNC, and Muscle Milk.
6. One public high-intent cluster carried qualified observations in October 2026: Best Sports Nutrition and Protein Supplements. The comparison and pricing clusters carried no qualified observations in the public benchmark.
7. Prompt-level observations retain the query, AI or search surface, answer, brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and, where exposed, citations or attributable evidence sources.
8. A mention is counted when a tracked brand is named anywhere in a qualified AI answer. Presence rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand is named.
9. A valid recommendation is counted when a brand appears in a genuine recommendation shortlist, excluding simple mentions. Valid recommendation coverage is the share of qualified observations where the brand appears in such a shortlist.
10. Top-three rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand is recommended in positions one through three. Rank-one rate is the share of qualified observations where the brand is the single first recommendation.
11. Average recommended rank covers rank-eligible recommendations only. A brand with no rank-eligible recommendations is shown as not applicable.
12. The benchmark does not measure market share, sales, attributable revenue, organic-search ranking positions, social mention volume, or causality from a metric movement alone. Movements are recorded as observations, not attributed outcomes.

See How AI Is Recommending Your Brand

The public benchmark shows where Legion Athletics is winning and losing in AI recommendations. A company-level AI visibility audit maps the specific prompts, surfaces, competitors, and evidence sources behind those numbers, and identifies where targeted work will move the brand from shortlist to first position.