Just for the record, the gods of Norse Mythology (Thor, Loki, Odin, etc.) have been around a lot longer than comic books!
6 Likes
Previously, Red Bull preferred to sponsor individual athletes where possible. Sometimes they have global Red Bull athletes and sometimes they are through the local countries Red Bull subsidiary. They have been in cycling for quite a while now, mostly through individuals. I think Wout has been sponsored through the Belgium Red Bull for a few years now. At first he wasn’t allowed to wear the helmet in road racing but I think that the UCI has changed that rule recently.
They are notoriously stringent about who gets sponsored and who gets to “wear the gear”, a weird way of marketing through scarcity. Probably why they never sponsored a cycling team as they didn’t want the non-superstars to wear Red bull brand stuff. Recently they appear to have relaxed that restriction so that could be why they have chosen to sponsor a full team now.
2 Likes
2 Likes
Not to mention Kate Courtney, PFP, Evie Richards, Emily Batty, etc., on the women’s XC side. If you follow XC, Red Bull has a VERY strong roster.
Energy drinks have pretty much carried the sport of motocross/supercross for the last handful of years, which has been kind of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they’ve pumped a bunch of money into the sport which has created greater awareness and allowed for more rider sponsorship & team growth. On the other, many would argue that energy drinks are the modern-day equivalent of the tobacco and alcohol of the past, and their target market is young, impressionable kids. It’s also kinda scary that almost the entire industry is reliant on this one main source of funding.
Last year, a couple of the privateers picked up Only Fans sponsorships from female performers who have a presence on the platform. For the guys that struggle financially, this was a creative sponsorship that showed to have a good upside for both parties. This year, however, the sanctioning body and promoter (Feld / AMA) are trying to limit ‘adult content’ from the races but this screams of hypocrisy as the title sponsor, Monster, uses copious amounts of scantily clad “Monster Girls” as a part of their promotion.
Feld & AMA are notorious for wanting to control everything, while at the same time being whores for $$. This was abundantly clear a few years ago when riders started picking up CBD sponsorships. The promoters quickly banned any CBD logos at the races, only to follow it up the next year by signing CBDMD as a title sponsor and plastering their logo all over the stadiums.
Anyways, of all the energy drinks, I think Red Bull is the most sophisticated and with their resources, I think we could see some meaningful advancements in the sport of cycling.
3 Likes
Totally, Red Bull has sponsored a very accomplished list of individual athletes in almost all areas of cycling for a long time now but I think this is their first attempt at sponsoring (or at least funding) a complete cycling team. They sponsor Kate Courtney but not the entire Scott XC team. I think its the same across most of the non-traditional sports, most of the time they are sponsoring an individual not a team.
It will be interesting to see if they move towards sponsoring/funding entire teams in the future. Red Bull sponsoring/funding an entire team is not how they have typically operated outside of F1 and soccer.
2 Likes
Oh Yeah, that’s Jayco with AlUla, which I left off the list!
I’ll be honest, as a 55 year old I like to have an energy drink, like Red Bull, before a race, hard group ride, or hard interval session. It helps me push harder. I typically only drink them when exercising hard or if I need to stay up late for some event.
2 Likes
I don’t think there has been a rule change, I think the issue was getting the team to agree it, since they wouldn’t want all their riders wearing different helmets with different personal sponsors. My understanding is that JV made an exception for Wout, maybe partly because he is so important to the team that they didn’t want to upset him, and maybe it doesn’t hurt that presumably Jumbo sell a lot of Red Bull through their supermarkets.
Tom Pidcock is also a Red Bull athlete, and as far as I know he’s never worn a Red Bull helmet while racing for Ineos on the road, though does wear it for CX and has worn one with GB kit at Road Worlds. Presumably Ineos therefore aren’t happy for him to wear it when on the road with them. Which again might be sponsor driven - Ineos also own a stake in the Mercedes F1 team who are arch rivals with Red Bull F1.
4 Likes
Hopefully Red Bull makes cycling cool again and it starts attracting better sponsors. Our current sponsors are super markets, petro chemical, and nation states with questionable human rights records.
More traditional sponsors, I think, shied away from cycling after the EPO era. No sponsor wanted to back an Armstong only to suffer a positive drug test later on.
3 Likes
It’s a catch 22 isn’t it? If Red Bull does make cycling more cool, that just makes questionable nation states even more likely to want to be associated with it. And they have the money to outspend even the biggest companies if they want to (with the possible exception of Apple and a few others!).
Same issue across most sports to be honest. When I was a kid most sports sponsorship seemed to come from alcohol and tobacco, that has been mostly phased out (in Europe at least) but those companies have just been replaced by petrostates, oligarchs and betting companies. At least we don’t (yet) seem to have betting companies getting involved in cycling. Of the 20 English Premier League football teams, 8 now have a betting company sponsor on their shirt.
Maybe, maybe not. First, it only takes $40-50M to run a top team. That is chump change for all the big brand name corporations - Nike, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Pepsi, Coke, etc. And in cycling, you can do a lot with $10-20M. They don’t have to be team owners.
Will cycling get so hot that billionaires and nation states start buying up all the properties? I’m not sure.
I still think the mainstream companies like Apple or Amazon are probably still gun shy about positive drug tests.
1 Like
Of course, I just used the most likely version that a broader bunch of people may have seen or heard about.
1 Like
(It’s the flu. Not sure which one would be worse)
I read an article mid-year that made the argument that companies like Red Bull sponsoring motocross were hurting the sport. It’s become a tighter, faster, and more dangerous sport, and, according to the article, many riders were quitting the FASTER, HARDER, TALLER drive of Red Bull and other sponsors, too many because they literally can’t ride any longer. Every race has become an extreme sport event, and people are doing the most insane things to BE faster, harder, taller. People breaking their necks, shattering legs, hips, shoulders, etc.
I grew up on a dirt bike, and remember when arena-cross started. There were people who said it was insane, and predicted it would ruin young rider lives, but kids were chasing money, and fame. It’s a huge draw for a kid/adult to pass up. Red Bull adds flash and cameras luring people into training for and doing them.
Sure, you can argue that Red Bull, and other ‘hyper sports drinks’ have helped the sport of motocross, but there is a wake of injured and ruined lives. I wonder what Red Bull will end up doing to the sport of road cycling. Sure most of what they could try is limited by rules and regulations, but that makes me wonder why Red Bull would sponsor a rather boring sport like that.
But conversely Red Bull will draw more eyes, money and riders to the road cycling sport, and hopefully they can spark road cycling to sweep across America. We NEED more cycling events, we need a pro-circuit that would draw foreign pros to compete here instead of ‘over there’.
And as to ‘sports drinks’, some have an ingredient that can cause irregular heart rhythms and can also cause afib and other issues. I’m one that is sensitive to something (possible guarana) in some of those drinks, and there are people that have heightened sensitivity to caffeine, and the obese children of America don’t need yet another reason to quaff overly sugared junk. (I’m waiting for the Road Race video game so kids can sit on the damn couch and ‘race’ bikes Like The Pros. You have to know that it IS coming 
) Red Bull won’t be marketing the sport, they will be marketing their brand of Slurm (or is it Brawndo (It has electrolytes)). But it’s a done deal so I’ll just sit and watch what happens. As to doping, imagine the Red Bull sponsored team hugging the bottom of the ratings, a losing team. The urge to dope will be huge. Hey, maybe they could start a second road cycling sport where everyone is doping, as many have joked about. Would it be a success? That’s rather tongue in cheek…
It’s entertaining/interesting, seeing those ancient Gods. They were created largely out of superstition/ignorance, and as a way to control the populace. You definitely did not want to piss off some of those Gods.
2 Likes
- Not coming… already here:
And this one dates back several years IIRC:
I believe one of these serves as the foundation for VirtuPro cycling app that is still in beta.
I’m not sure how it works in motocross but the conservative UCI is not going to change the rules of road racing to please Red Bull.
I admit my bias as a weekly Monster & Rockstar drinker while not being an alcohol drinker, but it just 
how these drinks get put down to be as bad or worse than alcohol specifically. There seems to be some odd acceptance of booze on a societal level despite it being more or less poison regardless of the version in use. I haven’t tried to find out specifically if one is necessarily worse than the other, but I struggle to put both in the same bucket considering how widely known the consequences of alcohol use are.
There are definitely be people that suffer some issues from these drinks, but it seems less absolute vs the issues with alcohol from my experience.
4 Likes
The societal problem is the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic but that usually takes fast food plus guzzling 32 ounce big gulps every day.
In the context of an athletic person drinking a Red Bull, Gatorade, or Coke it’s a non-issue IMO.
Alcohol is a toxin to the body pure and simple but people like the buzz. Alcohol is also associated with all sorts of cancers starting at the mouth and ending at the rectum. (I’m not being preachy - I enjoy a couple glasses of red wine once a week or so.)
5 Likes
Except the UCI does regulate sponsors. For example lotteries are no longer allowed to be listed as team sponsors.
1 Like