Is Red Bull Football Sponsorship Taking It Too Far?
I'm sure most of you have had a Red Bull drink. It's the most popular energy drink in the world with about 8 billion cans sold a year... basically one can for each person across the planet. Since 1987 the caffeinated giants have been making waves with their sponsorships through sports which has given the company brand recognition on another level.
But, have Red Bull gone too far?
The company in the early days focused primarily on extreme sports and motor racing sponsorship which helped to put the company on the map. The company owns two F1 racing teams today - Scuderia Alpha Tauri and Red Bull Racing. It's Red Bull's aggressive sponsorship in soccer/football that is causing so much controversy, that the company's owned football teams are quite literally the most hated teams in the world.
Red Bull was founded in Austria so it makes sense that the company sought ownership of a football team there. In 2005 Red Bull purchased Austrian team SV Austria Salzburg. Red Bull - headed up by Dietrich Mateschitz - took advantage of the club who was having financial difficulties. Following the purchase, Mateschitz literally declared "this is a new club with no history".
The original violet colours of the club were stripped away, and Red Bull's corporate colours of red and white were now adopted by the team. After five months of fans resisting the change and trying to get some sort of their history recognised, they effectively gave up. Those supporters formed the new team SV Austria Salzburg who are plying their trade inthe lower leagues.
A year after their purchase, the financial might of FC Red Bull Salzburg meant that they could hire Italian legend Giovanni Trapattoni as manager alongside German legend Lothar Matthäus as coach. Much to the irk of teams in the Austrian Bundesliga, they're effectively a corporate football team which is using the team for a profit. It's not even the fact that it gives them advertising exposure.
Red Bull Salzburg used their buying power to fund prospects like Sadio Mane, Takumi Minamino and Erling Haaland to their books. They would then sell them for astronomical profits. Between 2013 and 2019 the club earned €300 million in transfers and sit behind only Benfica and Ajax in terms of European net transfer balances in the last five seasons.
Economically, Red Bull Salzburg has been a monumental success for the club and company and that's what pisses off football fans even more. The fact that a corporate team has come along, used their financial power to purchase players, turn a massive profit, and dominate the domestic league. Since 2013, the club has won 8 Austrian Bundesliga titles in a row!
In 2009 Red Bull used a similar tactic to penetrate German football. Before 1998 football clubs in Germany were non-profit organisations owned by fans. The 50+1 rule came into place so that German teams could still compete with other teams in Europe who were backed financially by foreign investors. The 50+1 deal means should a company purchase a team, the clubs fans hold a majority voting right meaning that an investor cannot claim the club as personal property.
That didn't bother Red Bull.
In 2009, Red Bull purchased fifth division side SSV Markranstädt for what's believed to be €350,000. They then changed the name of the club, the logo and put together a war chest of an estimated €100m for transfers.
Bundesliga rules prevent corporate names being used in the team name so they could not call themselves Red Bull Leipzig. The marketing team had a clever way around it. The club is officially called RasenBallsport Leipzig which translates into Lawn Ball Sports Leipzig. The abbreviation for RasenBallsport is RB so the team became known as RB Leipzig.
Clever.
So how did the club get around the 50+1 rule regarding corporate ownership?
Well take Borussia Dortmund for example. They have 140,000 members that have a collective majority ownership in the club. RB Leipzig? Around 20 "official" club members, and they're all either employees or associates of Red Bull.
Dortmund charges something like €60 for membership but RB Leipzig charges around €1000 as a deterrent for fans to become members. But most importantly for the club, they can reject any membership request without any reason to keep the club "wholly owned" by Red Bull and it's employees or associates.
RB Leipzig is the most hated club in Germany and it's a deep hatred. They blatantly flouted the corporate name and 50+1 legislations and continue to perform very well on the field.
The club rocketed from its fifth division status in 2009 to the Bundesliga in 2016 thanks to their ability to purchase talent on the field. They also earned a remarkable Champions League semi-final berth in the 2019-20 season, losing to PSG 3-0 and missing out on playing in the finals against fellow Germans Bayern Munich.
Give it a few more years. The way they're tracking, they could be the new Bayern Munich of German football. Are they however taking it too far in the way they've approached it to get to the level they're at?
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Wolfgang Sport started in 2017 as a way to connect my passion for American and British sports. Today it's evolved into a blockchain sports blog pushing the boundaries into the crypto world and embracing Web3 technologies.
I would say they are clever with the way they went about the name thing. They've always shown with their actions that they want to rival and battle hard. I think most teams are doing everything they can to stay relevant and I can remember how Bayern Munich tried to stay dominant by prying on Borussia Dortmund's players as they were always buying them 🤣🤣😂😂. Too much politics and strategies in football 😂🤣
Yep, Bayern will always buy players from the team sitting second on the ladder behind them!
They enjoy crippling them 🤣🤣😂
Hi friend,
Hehe interesting story.
Didn't know this drink has been since the 80's as I never saw it then as a boy in the region I grew up, Delta State,Nigeria.
How they are so forceful in their approach with clubs. Well technically they are rule abiding🙂. However I think in the case of Leipzig they can lower cost,so that more fans get in.
Thanks for the information.
I didn't know they were 80's too. I could've sworn they came out in the mid-2000's but I suppose thats when they got really popular
I love how you wrote this blog, it is very engaging and well written and I learn a lot too!
I would not say they are taking it too far. In my opinion it is the same if a rich investor would take over the teams. In my opinion they are working very professional and giving the youth a chance which I find very attractive to be honest.
It's not necessarily a bad thing to have investors in football to progress the game, but in this instance Red Bull make obvious efforts to bend the rules which were in place to maintain the integrity of the Bundesliga
I've always had a problem with any league where a team can buy their way into the top. People say a lot of negative things about how American sports are run but I think one thing they have done correctly is to have caps on how much individual teams are allowed to spend, corporate sponsors or not. I don't really follow soccer/football very closely but when I do look at it, it is almost always the richest teams that are at the top. Maybe some people like it this way but I am more of a "root for the underdog" type of person.
I also don't drink Red Bull, that stuff is the Jolt Cola of the day. It's terrible for ya.
Wow I had to google Jolt Cola. Never heard of it.
Caps in American sports is amazing and I agree. It allows the draft to be a major mechanism of a club improving, which balances out a team that may have a benefit in free agency because of being desirable location
Normally, yes. But in the current climate, I actually kinda think they're not doing as much as they could lol!
They did try an academy and team in Ghanaian football but they absorbed it into another academy and left the project. That's an area totally untapped!