How Does RedBull Make Money?
If you look at Red Bull from a bird’s eye view, you’d just see that they sell 1 drink! The Red Bull Energy Drink. (They have recently started to add a few flavored variants, but are still just energy drinks.)
Here are some interesting stats:
— Red Bull sold 9.804 billion cans worldwide in 2021.
— They employ 13,610 people in 172 countries as of 2021.
— They were the creators of a new product category in 1987: Energy Drinks— Red Bull makes each can for approximately 9 cents.
— The suggested retail price for a can is 3.59 USD.
— The biggest customers like Walmart and big grocery stores pay between 44 and 48 USD per case of 24 cans.
— i.e. they earn 1.87 USD per can, which is 20x production cost.
Now let’s zoom into the other details. They are NOT just an energy drink company. They are a lot more than what meets the eye.
They own & run 2 Formula One Teams,
1 Nascar team,
7 Professional Football Clubs and
2 Ice Hockey Teams.
They also own & host multiple proprietary events like
Crashed Ice Challenge,
Soap Box Race,
Hip hop events (Beat Boxing & MC, B-boy/girl)
E-sports (Counter Strike , Age of Empires 2, Dota 1, etc.)
Rubik’s World Cup,
The Wings for Life Run & 100+ more events.
They also sponsor thousands of athletes across different sports. You’ll be surprised with the list that’s about to follow.
Alpine
Skiing
Athletics
Australian
Football
Badminton
Baseball
Basketball
Beach Volleyball
Biathlon
Bike
BMX
Bobsleigh
Bouldering
Breaking
Canoe Racing
Canoe Slalom
Canoeing
Cliff Diving
Climbing
Cricket
Cross-Country Skiing
Cycling
Dance
Drifting
Enduro
Esports
F1
Fencing
Fitness
Formula Racing
Freerunning
Freeskiing
Games
Gaming
Golf
GRC
Handball
High Diving
Hockey
Hurdles
Ice Climbing
Ice Skating
Ironman
Junior Formula Series
Kayaking
Kitesurfing
Luge
Marathon
Martial Arts
Motocross
MotoGP
Motorbike Road Racing
Motoring
Motorsports
Mountain Running
Mountaineering
MTB
MTB Enduro
Nordic Combined
Offroad
Paragliding
Parkour
Rally
Rally Raid
Rallycross
Rugby
Running
Sailing
Skate
Skateboarding
Ski Jumping
Skiing
Slacklining
Snowboarding
Snowmobile
Soccer
Speed Skating
Speedway
Squash
Stockcar
Supercross
Surfing
Taekwondo
Tennis
Touring Car
Trial Biking
Triathlon
Ultrarunning
V8
Volleyball
Wakeboarding
Wakeskating
Windsurfing
Wingsuit
Flying
Wintersports
WRC
If you were looking for a count, that’s 98 disciplines where Red Bull sponsors 1000’s of athletes. Now let’s look away from the front end aspects.
They own the Red Bull Media House, which operates:
Red Bull TV,
Red Bull Photography,
Benevento Publishing,
Red Bull Music Academy,
Red Bull Records and
Red Bull Music Publishing all focusing on sport, lifestyle programming, music and games.
Some of the several magazines they publish are:
The Red Bulletin (lifestyle),
Servus (food, health and gardening);
Terra Mater (nature, science and history);
Bergwelten (alpinism) and
Seitenblicke (celebrities).
Apart from all of these, Red Bull does some crazy things like the event in 2012 where Felix Baumgartner jumped from space.
He became the first man to break the speed of sound in a freefall. (Reached a speed of 1,357.6 km/h (Mach 1.25)) Check this out
The project cost Red Bull a whopping $50 Million, but some experts estimate global reporting about the event to be worth ~6 billion USD. So it was probably worth it!
Also here’s the cherry on the cake, if you are a F1 fan. Checkout the 12 crazy stunts Red Bull did with its F1 cars
So obviously, Red Bull does much more than sell an energy drink! They have built the world’s best marketing engine!
Some final thoughts:
They spend almost a 3rd of their revenue on marketing. The revenue growth of Red Bull hasn’t slowed down since 2012.
The company is dependent almost completely on one product only: The Energy Drink.
Investments in sport teams and media production are therefore not only marketing activities but also an attempt to diversify and create additional value chains next to the “can” business.
Nevertheless, the overwhelming revenue driver, to this day, remains beverage sales, representing ~97% of total earnings. Red Bull mentions the other activities as “ongoing brand investment”, which indicates that these are losses, not revenue streams — at least not yet!
I’d love to hear if this satiated some of your curiosity. Let me know, so I can research & write more content in this genre. Thanks!
PS: Published first on Twitter
