What happened in the nine years between Oliver Mintzlaff denying rumours of any Red Bull GmbH involvement at Leeds United in 2015 and him being “optimistic and energised” with their new partnership and shareholding in 2024? A lot. But fundamentally, answers lie in the death of Red Bull GmbH co-founder Dieter Mateschitz.

After discovering the drink Krating Daeng in the 1980s, the Austrian entrepreneur single-handedly forged the sports and media empire, pioneering the ownership of teams and events to promote its brand while Thai co-founders TC Pharmaceutical focused on manufacture.

Mateschitz’s company rebranded football clubs in Austria, USA, Germany, and Brazil before his death in 2022 from pancreatic cancer, aged 78, prompted questions over what would happen to his 49% shareholding and who would run the company. Thirty-one-year-old Mark Mateschitz emerged as heir to his billionaire father’s fortune and a corporate restructure followed. Alongside CEO of Beverage Business Franz Watzlawick and CFO Alexander Kirchmayr, Oliver Mintzlaff became CEO of Corporate Projects and Investments.

A former distance runner, Mintzlaff had advanced through the marketing ranks at Puma before becoming a consultant for rising Bundesliga star Mario Gómez and Schalke coach Ralf Rangnick. After Rangnick was appointed director of football at Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig in 2012, Mintzlaff became assistant to Red Bull Head of Global Soccer Gérard Houllier and was elected CEO of RB Leipzig, before assuming the Head of Global Soccer role for himself.

Following Mateschitz’s death, speculation mounted on the future of Red Bull GmbH and its many subsidiaries. There were rumours of a power struggle and the company’s potential relocation to Asia, until a memo arose in May 2024 co-authored by Mark Mateschitz and Chalerm Yoovidhya, himself heir to Thai co-founder Chaleo. According to the internal communication, Red Bull GmbH would remain headquartered in Fuschl am See near Salzburg, where its global activities would continue to be coordinated from the heart of its Western European core market. Then in a shock move a few days later, it owned part of Leeds United.

Previously, Red Bull GmbH partnerships posed imminent existential threats to football clubs, but evidence started to emerge that the Leeds deal could represent a strategic twist. Because it exists to advertise a product, Red Bull GmbH is very familiar with regulations. Its slogan is ‘Gives you Wiiiings’ after the firm was successfully sued because drinking it doesn’t give you actual wings. It is active in countries where there are few curbs on football’s commerciality. Elsewhere — as I wrote in my Red Bullification article in issue one this season — it has developed a dynamic brand toolkit and used legal workarounds to achieve its aims.

When both Red Bull Salzburg (or to UEFA, FC Salzburg) and RB (that’s RasenBallsport) Leipzig qualified for Champions League in 2017, they encountered UEFA integrity laws Article 5, a rule safeguarding conflicts of interest and distortion of competition which states no individual or legal entity may have control or influence over more than one participating club.

To admit both teams, UEFA were satisfied that neither Red Bull GmbH nor RB Leipzig held decisive influence over Red Bull Salzburg, or vice versa. Two years prior they had instigated a ‘disengagement’ process from the Austrian club, removing key individuals and ending financial arrangements. They presented evidence that the cooperation agreement enabling significant transfer activity between the clubs had been terminated, and Red Bull GmbH’s relationship with Red Bull Salzburg resembled a standard sponsorship arrangement. It has not legally owned Red Bull Salzburg since.

Article 5 has come under increasing pressure in recent years. ENIC’s ownership of AEK Athens, Slavia Prague, and Vicenza required it to be drafted in 2001, before its first test by Red Bull GmbH in 2017. The second, in 2023, involved six clubs from three separate ownership groups: Aston Villa and Vitória Sport Clube, Brighton & Hove Albion and Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, and AC Milan and Toulouse.

By the time Manchester City and Girona, plus Manchester United and Nice, tested the rule again in 2024, the wording had been tweaked to allow clubs under common ownership to play in different UEFA competitions. With more and more of Europe’s top clubs involved with cross-investment structures, the days of a law that governance experts and multi-club owners alike describe as inadequate are looking numbered.

At Leeds United, Red Bull GmbH are “sharing knowledge” on how they “became a big multi-club”, according to Mintzlaff’s former client and now colleague Mario Gómez. Indeed, last year technical director Grétar Steinsson left Leeds to take on a similar role at 49ers Enterprises Global Football Group, the club’s ultimate owner. Leeds United’s direction into multi-club ownership seems inevitable, although its exact destination is less clear.

Red Bull GmbH’s precise shareholding in Leeds is similarly unknown, but according to the Leipzig press it’s just beneath the 10% threshold that would necessitate publication and exposure to the EFL’s Owners’ & Directors’ Test. When Leeds chairman Paraag Marathe says Red Bull have “no influence” at the club, it should be considered with UEFA Article 5 in mind, because Leeds are now one of many Red Bull involvements with potential for future European qualification.

Prevented by regulations from controlling any major clubs in Europe other than RB Leipzig, Mintzlaff improvised by establishing minority shareholdings not only at Leeds United but also at Paris FC, plus unusually conventional Red Bull sponsorships at Torino, Atlético Madrid, and a raft of Premier League clubs.

Logos, endorsements, and product placements embed Red Bull into the visual cultures of these clubs, none more so than Leeds United. The move normalises Red Bull GmbH across Europe, where it has a negative reputation for monopolising clubs for its own means. Another benefit is it advantageously leaves them positioned to increase their influence in several countries should anticipated changes to Article 5 materialise.

It’s a multi-club marketing and expansion strategy that couldn’t happen during Dieter Mateschitz’s lifetime, but elsewhere in the company his beliefs remain in evidence. Mintzlaff’s other CEO responsibilities include ServusTV, operated since 2007 by Red Bull Media House GmbH, a subsidiary of Red Bull GmbH based next door to Red Bull Salzburg in Wals-Siezenheim. Austria’s biggest private broadcaster by market share, the German-language channel is still aligned with Mateschitz’s personal political views.

On Red Bull’s 30th anniversary in 2017, Mateschitz made clear in a rare interview with Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung his support for Donald Trump and his opposition to the German and Austrian governments’ immigration policies. As the national team made Euro 2024’s last sixteen, ServusTV enjoyed its biggest ever audiences in Austria. But among exclusive live sports are in-house produced talk shows platforming European far-right figures on topics such as migration, climate, and gender from the same Hanger-7 studio Jürgen Klopp was unveiled as Red Bull’s Head of Global Soccer while surrounded by Mateschitz’s private aircraft collection.

It isn’t Mateschitz’s only foray into the right-wing press. In 2017 he also independently announced a European equivalent of Breitbart named Näher an die Wahrheit (Closer to the Truth) that ultimately became the short-lived media platform Addendum. As with everything Red Bull GmbH does, ServusTV is used to advertise its drinks brand at will. It is not conventional media but a complex marketing instrument, like its sports teams.

With its new proxy European clubs — plus Klopp’s appointment — Red Bull GmbH is sportswashing a reputation gained under Mateschitz for abusing football clubs to market its drinks brand, suggesting to fans it has changed when it’s merely adapting to expand within regulations.

In Asia, meanwhile, far from the constraints of UEFA Article 5, last autumn Oliver Mintzlaff and Mario Gómez attended the launch of Red Bull GmbH’s new Japanese club in Saitama. Despite Omiya Ardija’s outgoing owners making the usual assurances about the new ones respecting the club’s identity, within three months it was rebranded RasenBallsport Omiya Ardija. Dieter Mateschitz would have approved. ⬢