Leeds United have announced that Red Bull have acquired a minority stake in the club. They’ve also announced that, as a part of that purchase, the energy drink mogul will be the new shirt sponsor for the upcoming 2024/25 season. But it’s safe to say this is not a popular move – and there’s a whole load of history as to why Red Bull’s place in football is scrutinised, and that’s putting it nicely. So, let’s talk about it.
Red Bull was founded in 1984 by Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz after finding a drink on a trip to Thailand that cured his jet lag. For many a year, that’s all that Red Bull was. It was a jet lag cure, a hangover remedy, or a way of dealing with the cruel infliction of capitalist society that is waking up for work at 6am.
Now, though, Red Bull is much more than just a drink that helps you stay awake or, as the advertising will tell you, ‘gives you wings.’
Since 1989, they’ve been sponsoring athletes and sporting competitions. At first it was extreme sports – speedway, windsurfing or launching people out of space just to name a few – but since 2005, they branched out into Formula 1. Today, Red Bull team is the team in F1, historically boasting drivers like Sebastian Vettel and now some bloke called Max Verstappen, who has developed a reputation for being pretty fast.
Embed from Getty ImagesWhy did they do that? Well, because it makes them look cool. Red Bull don’t want to just be known as a drink; they want people to hear the name and associate it with all kinds of cool activities that elevate the brand to a higher station in the zeitgeist.
Extreme sports and F1 are one thing. But what sport do John and Jane Doe dedicate their lives to? Football, of course! As the most popular sport in the world, what better way is there to lodge your brand into the collective consciousness of nearly two billion people?
So, Red Bull started acquiring football teams. They started in Mateschitz’s native Austria, but their tact was one they’d steer clear of in future years.
SV Austria Salzburg is a club you might not be too familiar with these days, but throughout a lot of recent Austrian football history, they were a big deal. Three league titles, three Austrian Supercups and even a UEFA Cup final appearance embellished Salzburg’s biggest club. They played in purple and white. They were staples of the Austrian game.
Embed from Getty ImagesThat was until April 2005. Red Bull, eager to enter the football market, purchased the club outright and wasted no time transforming it into their own entity. The name was changed; Austria Salzburg became Red Bull Salzburg. Too on the nose, perhaps? Well, Mateschitz and Red Bull didn’t think so. They changed the badge, the colour scheme, the sponsor. A Red Bull Salzburg shirt was essentially a walking advert for an energy drink.
Predictably, fans hated it. Among the rest, they were particularly incensed by the change of the club’s colours. Austria Salzburg wore purple; that’s just how it was.
Generous as ever, though, Red Bull had an answer to this. To appease the incensed Salzburg fans, they allowed purple to feature on the shirts. Well, not quite the shirts; they allowed purple on the socks. Not all the socks, mind, just the goalkeeper’s socks. And not in every game: just away games. Oh, and they also erased all the club’s trophies from their history; this was an entirely new club. Happy now?
The answer was, obviously, a resounding no. So, some Austria Salzburg fans continued supporting the rebranded side, but many took an understandably high degree of offence to this new endeavour, and set up a phoenix club, which currently plays in the third tier of Austrian football, all the way down at the regional levels. It’s taken nearly 20 years for Red Bull Salzburg to play against Austria Salzburg in a competitive fixture, but this year, the two were drawn together in the Austrian Cup. Red Bull won 4-0.
Embed from Getty ImagesWhat Red Bull failed to realise was that football fans are not like fans of other sports. Football is ingrained in the fabric of society and its culture in ways that other sporting clubs generally aren’t. Football clubs are social enterprises which often define the cities and regions they’re in; would you know about Gelsenkirchen if not for Schalke, or would Manchester be so significant on a global level if not for Manchester United? Football clubs are not the same as other businesses; they’re not something to be chopped and changed at the whim of some venture capitalist. They’re lodged deeply in the hearts of communities.
Red Bull weren’t to be deterred, though. Red Bull Salzburg was an almost universally unpopular move, but they were still desperate to raise their levels of clout by tackling the football market. So, they continued.
Their next move took them away from Europe, heading to the USA. This was a smart move. There’s a reason American sports clubs are known as ‘franchises.’ They’re business ventures with athletes attached, and it’s quite normal for identities to change or franchises to move around. Red Bull reasoned that there would be less controversy by taking over such a franchise, and they were right.
They headed to New York, taking over the Metrostars in 2006. They still went full throttle with the renaming and reidentifying aspect, dubbing them New York Red Bulls and changing the club colours from red and black to white and red. They were still a walking Red Bull billboard, but this is – stereotypical as it may sound – more engrained in the culture of American sports and, considering that football culture is still relatively new in the USA even today, they faced far fewer issues in 2006. Furthermore, they allowed the team to keep the trophies won under the Metrostars name.
Embed from Getty ImagesSo, at least they were learning their lessons. Their next move, however, was by far their most controversial.
After finding success in North America, Red Bull were eager to return to Europe. Austria was a good first step, but now they wanted to move into a major league. Where better, then, than neighbours Germany?
Remember, Red Bull’s big problem entering the Austrian game was that they took over a side who was simply too big with too large a following. In Germany, they readjusted.
Have you heard of SSV Markrandstädt? Probably not, because they were only founded in 1990 and never climbed above the fourth tier of the football pyramid. They were also located in the former East Germany, not too far away from a city called Leipzig with virtually no footballing history. Yeah, you can probably see where this is going.
SSV Markrandstädt’s license was bought out by Red Bull in 2009 and they were transformed into RB Leipzig. Why ‘RB’ and not ‘Red Bull?’ Well, the DFB doesn’t allow teams to include a sponsor’s name, so Red Bull had to be creative. Technically, ‘RB’ doesn’t even stand for Red Bull; it stands for ‘Rasenballsport,’ a word that… well, it’s not even a German word.
Embed from Getty ImagesIt’s not hard to see why fans aren’t too fond of RB Leipzig. German football is very unique in its football culture; as mentioned earlier, football is enshrined in cultures and communities and perhaps nowhere in the world are the ills of corporate, modern football as rejected than in Germany. Welcoming a team that, again, is the closest thing to a walking billboard, doesn’t really align with those values.
What about 50+1, the rule that stipulates all German clubs must be majority fan (or, rather, member) owned? Well RB Leipzig technically are, but a membership could set you back a cool 800 euros; Bayern Munich, by comparison, charge around 30 to 60 euros for their memberships. Oh, and there’s no guarantee you’ll even become a member if you’re willing to pay the fee, because the board has been known to reject applicants with no notice.
When you add it all up, it’s not hard to see why a lot of fans see RB Leipzig’s very existence as a slap in the face to all the values which make German football what it is. They’ve found loopholes at every opportunity; technically, they’re not named after a brand, and technically they’re majority fan-owned, but they’re essentially football’s answer to a Rorschach test; everyone has their own interpretation.
Above everything, the grating thing is that Red Bull’s football teams are good. RB Leipzig barrelled through the Germany pyramid at astonishing speed and won back-to-back DFB-Pokal titles in 2022 and 2023. New York Red Bulls may never have won an MLS Cup, but they finished runners’ up in 2008 and have won three Supporters’ Shields (it is also worth remembering that whether they were good or not wasn’t really the point – it was seeing whether they could get away with taking over a club without an awful lot of backlash).
Then there’s Red Bull Salzburg, the original guinea pigs, who have won the Austrian Bundesliga 14 times since 2007 which is, quite frankly, absurd. But this is all at the expense of an authentic identity – and that’s what means more to football fans.
Embed from Getty ImagesSo now we’re in 2024 and Red Bull have, with a sense of delay and almost inevitability, made their first steps into the English game. Getting involved with a club as huge as Leeds United meant a rebranding exercise would be a proverbial kamikaze mission, so thankfully, there’s no indication that we’ll be seeing Red Bull Yorkshire or RB Leeds any time soon.
But they will be playing in white, with a massive Red Bull logo on their shirt just like the sides in Salzburg, New York and Leipzig – and they will be part of a family of clubs that has one sole purpose: to make an energy drink brand look cooler so, ultimately, they can sell more energy drinks.
If things stay as they are and don’t go any further, Leeds United don’t need to feel too guilty. At the end of the day, every team has sponsors. But Red Bull, for so, so many reasons, are particularly egregious in their attempts to monopolise football for their own benefit.
So, make no mistake about it: this will not, and probably should not, be a popular move. But it’s happening and, as of now, the Red Bull family has a new member.