An article in When Saturday Comes magazine on Red Bull’s rebrand of SV Austria Salzburg in 2005 changed my life. Reading how they had wiped the club’s history, shut the terraces of its most hardcore fans, called them “hooligans” and mocked attempts to negotiate the return of violet and white — the club’s colours since 1933 — by offering purple-tinted plastic glasses through which to watch matches, had me shocked at the state of football.

Anger, specifically at Ken Bates’ Leeds United, became a motivational creative force for me. Stickers, t-shirts, pull-out posters — Visit Beeston, Kenopoly, Batesonomics — none of these things would’ve happened in The Square Ball without Austria Salzburg fans. They altered the way I think about football, making me question exactly what it is that we’re supporting.

It only took a matter of weeks for negotiations to break down in 2005, from pre-season optimism of a rumoured big sponsor to the fateful September home game against Austria Wien, when fan groups who had forged the Initiative Violett-Weiss walked out through violet smoke bombs on 33 minutes to do as owners Red Bull dared: form their own club.

This I simply had to see. A year later, after contact with the Initiative and being put in touch with Harry, who would be my local host and is now one of my best mates, I did. Upon arrival at their modest, bustling ground in Nonntal for the final seventh-tier game before the winter break, I heard Marching On Together playing over the tannoy, which shouldn’t have been such a surprise because we’d arranged exactly that over pints of Stiegl the night before.

Through the years I’ve been welcomed back time and again by Harry and his fellow Absolut Salzburg group members to share their club’s exhilarating journey up the Austrian leagues. I’ve talked with fans young and old, from ultras to club chairmen, about how they went from three Bundesliga titles and a UEFA Cup final in the 1990s to awaydays at municipal sports grounds in obscure villages with poetic names like Schleedorf and Leopoldskron-Moos. The reason was described to me as Red Bullification — rebranding clubs to the limits of regulation using extreme workarounds, oppressing fan culture and cracking down on criticism – and all of this was my introduction to it. Maybe these words are yours.

So why do they do it? And how? To understand that you need to know a bit about what Red Bull is. In the 1980s, Austrian toothpaste salesman Dieter Mateschitz found that a Thai drink, Krating Daeng, eased his jetlag. He did a deal with its producer, Chaleo Yoovidhya: his company would make an adapted, fizzy version of the drink that Mateschitz would market to Europe and beyond. The company, Red Bull GmbH, was split 49% Mateschitz and 51% Yoovidhya, but Mateschitz would run it. Red Bull is still produced today in Thailand by TC Pharmaceutical and canned in Europe and the USA by the Austrian firm, Rauch.

So Red Bull GmbH don’t make Red Bull — just adverts for it, and lots of them. From their headquarters in picturesque Fuschl am See fifteen miles east of Salzburg, the marketing company identifies properties it can own to advertise its brand. From soapbox cars, flugtag, and air racing to motorsport, road cycling and football teams, everything is associated with youthful energy reflective of the drink’s brand demographic — the target market for everything they do.

Red Bull GmbH didn’t create the drink, nor any of the football clubs currently advertising it. SV Austria Salzburg, New York/New Jersey Metrostars, SSV Markranstädt, USK Anif, Clube Atlético Bragantino: the identities of these clubs in locations deemed by the company to be advantageous to its brand were all replaced by white shirts with the same bulls on the chest. What differed were Red Bull GmbH’s means of engagement and how the company navigated any regulations designed to stop behaviour like theirs.

After several clubs — FC Sachsen Leipzig, FC St Pauli, TSV 1860 München, and Fortuna Düsseldorf — declined proposals to become Red Bull’s German club alongside its teams in Austria and America, in 2009 the company hit upon an idea that became key to its subsequent acquisitions. They entered a partnership agreement with fifth-tier SSV Markranstädt. The tiny suburban Leipzig outfit would form the basis of a club earmarked for the city’s unoccupied 43,000-seat Zentralstadion, which would become Red Bull Arena, and the club, due to DFB rules, were named RB Leipzig.

An €800 annual membership scheme open only to a select few Red Bull GmbH people ensured the club met the criteria of German football’s rule requiring at least 50% +1 of a club’s shares to be held by members, even if there were only seven of them. Because everything else was expendable, RB Leipzig established two things: that Red Bull’s most important asset when buying a club was not its fanbase or history but merely its playing licence; and the extremes to which they would go to achieve their aims.

It also established the power of partnerships. Frustrated at ÖFB rules preventing Austrian Bundesliga reserve teams from being promoted to professional second-tier football, in 2012 Red Bull Salzburg formed a partnership with third-tier USK Anif. It successfully argued with the league that because it now operated under USK Anif’s playing licence, the renamed club, FC Liefering, wasn’t Red Bull Salzburg’s reserves at all — despite wearing Red Bull Salzburg’s colours and playing at Red Bull Salzburg’s ground.

In 2019, having failed to promote Red Bull Brasil to Série A, the company again signed a partnership, this time with second-tier Clube Atlético Bragantino in Bragança Paulista, sixty miles north of São Paulo. Red Bull sponsored the club’s shirts which, like the rest of its identity, it was assured would remain untouched. “Não mudará escudo,” the club tweeted. “We will not change the badge.” Boosted by the arrival of Red Bull Brasil’s infrastructure, they were promptly promoted in special edition black and white shirts harking back to a 1990s era fondly remembered by fans. It was the last shirt Clube Atlético Bragantino ever wore, because the following season they were renamed Red Bull Bragantino.

To 2024, and Red Bull GmbH has once again established a partnership, this time in the largest one-club city in the UK, the company’s second-biggest market globally, with all the usual assurances. Sure, it’s a minority shareholding and the buck, he insists, may well stop with Leeds United chairman Paraag Marathe now, but what about when it doesn’t? What value is there in saying, “It’s not going to be the Leeds Red Bulls — they understand that,” about a company with two decades’ worth of workarounds as precedents? Red Bull Salzburg are called FC Salzburg in European competition; RB stands not for the obvious but for RasenBallsport; neither FC Liefering’s name nor badge has any bulls whatsoever.

Following the death of Red Bull GmbH co-founder Dieter Mateschitz in 2022, it is hoped the firm has mellowed in its approach to ownership and is open to conventional sponsorship. But its initial stake at Leeds United, and the now-familiar routine of its introduction as a partnership, suggests otherwise. As fantastic as Leeds’ away kit looks in all yellow with the Smiley badge, such priceless heritage is devalued when appearing next to the logo of an owner of multiple clubs that pulled a similar stunt at one they subsequently rebranded just five years ago.

For all these reasons and more, none of them to do with the colour or even the word red, whatever they go on to do at or with Elland Road, Red Bull GmbH at Leeds United is objectionable and sows serious doubts over 49ers Enterprises’ understanding of football tradition and fan culture. The energy drink marketing company’s presence in LS11 will become increasingly divisive over time. ⬢