LONDON: Red Bull further extended their interests in sport on Tuesday by investing in rugby union for the first time by taking over English top-flight strugglers Newcastle.
The Austria-based energy drinks company already has significant interests in football, motor racing and winter sports.
The club will now be known as Newcastle Red Bulls.
Oliver Mintzlaff, Red Bull CEO corporate projects and investments, said their aim was to “empower the club to reach its full competitive potential”.
They face an uphill task as they take over a club that has failed to sparkle in recent years, finishing bottom in the past three Premiership campaigns.
Semore Kurdi, who had been majority owner since 2011, put Newcastle up for sale towards the end of last year.
“Red Bull’s takeover of Newcastle is a landmark moment for our sport and a powerful endorsement of our vision and strategy for the future of the PREM,“ PREM chief executive Simon Massie-Taylor said in a statement, using the new name for the rebranded Premiership.
“We are hugely excited by Red Bull’s ambition for the club, which includes developing the player pathway in the North East and growing the club’s fanbase,“ he added.
He said Red Bull’s “track record in global sport” would bring “enormous value not only to Newcastle but to the PREM as a whole”.
There will be no upheavals at the top with the vastly-experienced Steve Diamond remaining the club’s director of rugby.
The Newcastle players will get a chance to show their qualities to their new owners when they get their season underway with a home match against six-time champions Saracens on September 26.
But while Red Bull have won six Formula One constructors’ championships and eight drivers’ world titles, Diamond warned the new regime would take time to make its presence felt at Newcastle -- although it would deliver success.
“We’ll be looking at world-class facilities, world-class players, world-class coaches coming to Newcastle over the next three or four years to hopefully dominate in the future,“ Diamond told a conference call.
He added: “The situation has happened at a difficult time for recruiting, so the main job I’ve been doing for the last four weeks is getting my ducks in a row to have a competitive team for September.”
Diamond, however, is in no doubt of the importance of Red Bull’s investment given Newcastle’s nearest rival Premiership club is Sale, more than 100 miles away.
“It future-proofs the professional game in the North East and the north,“ he said. - AFP
