(Bloomberg) -- It should have been a weekend of celebration for billionaire Jack Owoc.

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On Instagram, he blew out the candles atop a massive birthday cake dedicated to his blockbuster product, Bang Energy. On TikTok rolled a medley of videos showing women clutching cans of the drink and of Owoc, crowdsurfing and pumping his fists in the air.

But the cheery posts from Sunday, which marked the energy drink’s 10-year anniversary, obscured a far more somber reality. That same day, Owoc signed papers to put his company into bankruptcy protection.

A combination of legal damages, a failed distribution deal and stagnant sales has overwhelmed the Miami-based energy-drink maker and its founder, unraveling what some observers call the most improbable success story in the beverage industry.

Court papers filed in Florida on Monday reveal that Bang’s parent company owes more than $500 million to its arch-rival, Monster Beverage Co., and a small California juice maker. It owes another $115 million to PepsiCo Inc., its old distributor.

Meanwhile, Bang’s share of the energy-drink market, once nearing 10%, now sits just above 6%.

In a statement, Owoc vowed to keep the business going and said the company will emerge stronger. He disclosed that Bang’s lenders have put up another $100 million, and that the firm has pieced together a new distribution network that will take over once PepsiCo stops shipping Bang Energy on its trucks this month.

“We are coming like a freight train and cannot be stopped,” Owoc said.

Mounting Challenges

But Bang’s challenges are mounting. Taken together, the debt to PepsiCo and the cumulative legal damages, which could still swell, likely swallows up most of the revenue Owoc’s company collected last year from sales of Bang Energy, its dominant product, according to estimates by Bloomberg News. And industry insiders point out that the energy-drink category has changed since Bang’s astronomic rise began in 2018: There are now lots of good-for-you brands, and distributors increasingly want to carry several of them, not just one.