If the word ‘content’ has come to encapsulate just about everything the sports industry produces and sells – a catch-all term covering live events, media rights, sponsorship packages, hospitality experiences, and everything in between – there can be no mistaking that content, in all its many forms, is Red Bull’s forte.
On any given day, a quick scroll through the homepage of Red Bull TV reveals much about the brand upon which the digital streaming platform has been built.
On arrival, visitors are presented with a sleek selection of autoplay trailers for shows and videos on sports like mountain biking, BASE jumping, motocross and backcountry skiing. Further down, beneath inviting clips of big wave surfers and snowboarders brandishing cans of Red Bull, interviews with aerobatic stunt pilots and acoustic sessions featuring up-and-coming artists, there are feature-length films and documentaries profiling everything from the rise of French house music to skateboarding in the ancient towns of Central America.
Dig a little deeper and it quickly becomes clear that there is plenty more where that came from. Beyond the well-stocked landing page, housed within a hulking array of channels and formats, lies an eclectic menagerie of general interest stories, feats of dumfounding daring and athleticism, and intrepid expeditions to some of the remotest places and people on the planet.
“I think there are a lot of people who are aware that we do this stuff – we do production, we do video – but not always understanding exactly how it all fits together,” says Gerrit Meier, who has been chief executive of Red Bull Media Network and managing director of Red Bull Media House since 2016.
“What was not clear to me, which is amazing, is how ingrained we truly are in finding talent and doing events and how we do this on the content creation side as well.
“I think the overall perception is that we’re doing a lot, and because everything is not connected necessarily – because we’re doing a lot of different disciplines, a lot of different athletes – it’s sometimes hard to get your head around exactly how it all fits.”
Red Bull is indeed an organisation whose tentacles extend through virtually every link in the content value chain. Part beverage brand, part media company, part event operator, part team owner, part marketing agency, part rights distributor – it is, in many ways, an entire ecosystem unto itself; a unique beast with a life of its own that effortlessly straddles just about every consumer passion point under the sun.
Much of that is down to the far-reaching scope of the company’s sprawling multiplatform media arm, whose product range spans TV, mobile, digital, audio, and print. As well as operating its own website and Red Bull TV, its aforementioned over-the-top (OTT) service, Red Bull Media House encompasses Austrian TV network ServusTV, The Red Bulletin print magazine, the production company Terra Mater Factual Studios, and a content library for third-party media organisations known as Red Bull Content Pool.
I think the perception is that we’re doing a lot, and because everything is not connected necessarily it’s sometimes hard to get your head around exactly how it all fits
Gerrit Meier, Red Bull Media Network chief executive
Even for Meier, who has worked in senior leadership positions across sports, media and entertainment for more than two decades, the sheer scale of Red Bull’s media operation is difficult to fathom. But his remit is not to educate outsiders about what Red Bull does or what the brand stands for. His chief mandate is to grease the gears in a supremely slick in-house media machine, one which houses more than 600 sports events, documentaries and factual entertainment as well as scripted series and feature films, and which is often held up as the quintessential content factory.
“The media house really has the role of providing the competency behind how we think about content,” he explains, “everything from the format, the length, the quality, the production management aspect, where the content should live, what’s the best home for it, is it going to be owned, managed, shared or licensed or co-produced, all the way to the activation. There’s more than that but if you take the value chain of content from idea to delivery, that’s the media house.”
Based at Red Bull’s central hub just outside Salzburg, Austria, Meier is responsible for the company’s global content, production, programming and distribution operations. It is a role for which he has been preparing, knowingly or not, for much of his working life. Before joining Red Bull in late 2016, he spent three years heading up WWE’s international business, where he reported directly to wrestling supremo Vince McMahon. Prior to that role he earned his living in music, first for EMI Group, then at Clear Channel and Spotify, having graduated from Harvard Business School with an MBA in Media.
The Red Bull Rampage, an invitation-only freeride mountain bike competition held near Zion National Park, Utah, United States, is streamed live in full via Red Bull's social media channels
Taken together, those roles have ensured Meier is well-versed in the salient trends that have shaped and sculpted the entertainment landscape since the late 1990s – from the decline of linear TV and analog music formats to the associated rise of social and digital media. He himself has written extensively on the evolution of content distribution and emerging business models, and he is now putting every ounce of his knowledge into practice at Red Bull.
“For me,” he says, “coming into this with the resources and talent that we have as a company, and the genuine interest, to then get your hands on the opportunity to be in sports, be in culture, create events with our marketing organisation, and build this both for the brand and the second mandate – for the media house, the non-branded side – was amazing.”
Where Red Bull’s public-facing brand encompasses its owned or sponsored events, athletes, teams and media channels – and, of course, its eponymous energy drink – the media house sits somewhere across each of those verticals, promoting, publicising and propping up the overall ecosystem.
“We don’t believe in traditional marketing; we don’t do big television commercials, we’ve never done that,” says Meier. “We believe that we can activate through events and great content, and that’s where we’d rather spend our money. So doing that and having brand relevance absolutely still drives the core business. But we also now do a lot of things where you’re like, ‘wow, that has nothing to do with the brand’, but it still really makes good content.”
When it comes to content creation, the Red Bull approach is perhaps best illustrated by, and most commonly associated with, the world record breaking Red Bull Stratos project of 2012. In arguably the most ambitious publicity stunt ever staged, Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner leapt from a helium stratosphere to become the first human to break the sound barrier without the help of an engine.
Audacious, risky, mesmerising, viral-ready: Baumgartner’s out of- this-world skydive had all the makings of a live Red Bull spectacle. Fundamentally, it boiled down to a show of elite athletic performance and unspeakable daring in a wholly unique setting, replete with stunning visuals and no expense spared. Indeed, the formula was tried and trusted, having already been applied by Red Bull elsewhere – in awe-inspiring projects showcasing the diverse and perilous worlds of BASE jumping, cliff diving, aerobatic racing, free solo climbing, and ice cross downhill.
“I think if we were following trends we would be covering different sports,” laughs Meier. “I think what we’ve managed to do successfully is [to get involved in] so many sports – whether it’s urban sports or other local or niche sports – that have long, deep traditions in specific countries. Obviously we haven’t created them, but they are also not really known beyond a certain audience or beyond a certain territory.
“I think we’ve also been fascinated in involving ourselves with something that is great in itself – great ideas, great people, great stories, highly inspirational, highly aspirational. And then getting ourselves involved to give that wings, right. That is where the model is a little bit different…and that has allowed us to do a lot of sports over the years that now have become Olympic or bigger sports. “I think that is where we like to see ourselves. We want to play a role, to give great ideas and great things the uplift that they deserve.”
We want to play a role, to give great ideas and great things the uplift that they deserve
While Red Bull has found avenues to invest, and enjoyed considerable success, in mainstream sports like soccer, golf and Formula One, Meier is keen to stress the extent to which it has helped raise the profile of many smaller disciplines, not to mention the hundreds of sponsored athletes with whom it works. He notes how the company has achieved notable results by packaging independent events into yearlong series – such as the Red Bull Signature Series, a previously disparate run of world renowned action sports competitions – to provide consistency for the athletes and fans, to bring about new opportunities to build seasonal narratives, and to instil greater value for broadcasters and commercial partners.
Today, Red Bull’s events portfolio spans everything from elite professional series to amateur participation events, niche curiosities like the Red Bull Soapbox Race, and more purpose led occasions such as the Wings for Life World Run. The company has never been shy of crossing cultural or geographical boundaries, either. Event series like Red Bull Batalla de los Gallos, the hugely popular Spanish-language freestyle rap competition, and Red Bull BC One, which features many of the world’s top break dancers competing in cities across the globe, are evidence of a brand committed to championing subcultures that have long existed on the periphery.
For Meier, who believes events like dance cyphers and rap battles are “highly localised platforms for expression” in much the same way most sports are, Red Bull’s involvement in those types of fringe, youthful pastimes is only natural. “That type of stuff just works,” he says. “We just had our anniversary for BC One. It’s not even a subculture anymore – it’s a real, meaningful, strong community. When you see them [the B-Boys], they’re all with each other – they’re not against each other.”
The Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series sees divers jump from platforms as high as 28 metres
And therein lies the true essence of Red Bull’s business. Its ability to bounce comfortably between multifarious worlds and communities, whether by creating live events, producing content or signing athlete endorsers, and to be ubiquitous but in a credible and authentic way, sets it apart from many other organisations that might have a harder time fitting in.
“We track a lot of things,” explains Meier, when asked how Red Bull measures return on investment. “Some of that is objective – there’s obviously a certain objectivity to business growth. But we also track on a more subjective level – something that you can’t really quantify – and again something that takes a really long time.
“It also separates us. Where we have the opportunity to make commitments to certain athletes for sticking with us for a long time, and if they have a relationship for the rest of their life because of the result of it, because of what you were able to achieve and where you could play a hand in their success, how do you define that? If you do this in a scaleable way, as we have, you create something where you just generate a lot of positivity, and that positivity of course always returns back to growing your business itself.
“But, again, it’s a different kind of approach and if it was that easy or that measurable, then I think other people would be doing it. That’s really driven by the original vision of the company and I think we’re really staying true to that.”
Red Bull’s world
At last October’s Sportel sports media and marketing convention the Red Bull Media House stand occupied a specially constructed meeting and hospitality area directly outside the main entrance. Such prominent positioning is in keeping with Red Bull’s style, of course, but it is also a way of letting attendees know that the company is very much open for business.
“The ‘what’ is only as important as the ‘where’,” Meier tells SportsPro at the event. “What do we create, but then also, where do we deliver it to? That is what makes something like Sportel interesting because obviously this is where content and distribution hits, and everybody understands how that is changing.”
That Red Bull Media House is so openly hawking its wares at an industry conference like Sportel says something about its evolving distribution strategy. Though the company continues to operate its own branded media platforms – “which are super important to us because it’s the one place where you can get everything,” says Meier – it also knows that effective content delivery relies on meeting audiences on their terms.
What’s more, with so many traditional media companies and nascent OTT operators currently in the market for rights beyond premium live content to build out their digital offerings, it is fair to say the youth-focused, lifestyle-led programming Red Bull has to offer is only growing more sought-after.
Red Bull Media House's desire to engage with the sports industry at events like Sportel shows an understanding that effective content delivery relies on meeting audiences on their terms (pic: Red Bull/LinkedIn)
“We recognise that audiences live where they live, and some audiences don’t want to move from where they live,” says Meier, who has himself rarely spoken to the media or at industry gatherings since assuming his current role. “It’s very clear, for example, that people who live on YouTube, a lot of them will consume your content on YouTube as long as they can stay on YouTube. I think Netflix kind of sees themselves in that same position.
“For us, going where the audiences are is super important. If there is somewhere where the audience can be found, and we can contribute with great content, then that’s where we want to be. I think that is where, over the last year and a half, we’ve changed significantly our approach to be truly audience-led.”
That shift in strategy is undoubtedly a sign of the times, but it is also a measure of Red Bull’s holistic, platform-agnostic approach to content distribution. For Meier, the sprawling nature of the business, and the variety of its output, means that the company competes with everyone and no one, which in turn enables it to work with just about anyone.
“From our perspective, we’re not pursuing paid models,” he continues. “We believe we create really, really good content which has value and people would love to see it, and we want to provide that. If that extends to third parties, then we license or we co-produce or we co-programme. That’s really important to us as well because we can be an enabler for ideas for those broadcasters. That’s the space that we like to play in.
“I think the benefit we have is that we can be a partner to anyone, right. We aren’t really competitive to anything. Sometimes we can bring athletes, sometimes it’s about someone else’s event, we can create content that has nothing to do with any of it. That’s a very unique position, so we look at how we can create the biggest benefit of that to the audiences.”
In sport, Red Bull Media House maintains media partnerships with several major federations and properties. Since 2012, it has been the exclusive media production and broadcast partner of the International Cycling Union (UCI) Mountain Bike World Cup, for which it has also held global distribution rights since 2016. It also part-owns, operates and airs the Beach Volleyball Major Series, which is officially sanctioned by the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB), while it retains an interest in WRC Promoter GmbH, the commercial and promotional arm of the World Rally Championship (WRC).
“For us, UCI is a great example,” says Meier, outlining his company’s approach to such partnerships. “The UCI has really billed itself as the premium product, the premium event series in that space, and hopefully with some of the production, with the way we can evolve over the years, there is a role we can play. Again, the sports themselves have got much greater traction. Just look at sales of mountain bikes; when I grew up, a BMX was as far as you could get! Now you see that this whole industry has come out of it and, again, if we can step back and say we had a part in that, that is good satisfaction for us.
“They’re the roles we like to play and they’re the partnerships we seek. The partnerships we don’t seek are the ones that are purely about monetary value; that’s usually not what we do. There are enough brands out there that play in that space and that’s great and that gives a lot of money to those sports and the athletes that need it.”
In Red Bull’s world, then, the traditional notions of sponsorship and media rights agreements don’t apply. Flexibility and creative freedom are guiding principles, and there are no rules when it comes to forging partnerships.
“Neymar Jr’s Five is a great example,” continues Meier, referring to the five-a-side event series the brand has created with the Brazilian soccer star. “Obviously we’re not the ones who found Neymar, built Neymar – Neymar is Neymar.
“So when you deal with someone who gets big cheques from big companies and big brands, coming up with a brand new concept around a new event series that benefits the local athletes, the local audiences, build something up that, as a concept format, can grow and grow in a scaleable way and that then pays back into his foundation, now you already have a different partnership because here we can bring in our event activation, our local activation, our production capabilities.
“That is where we know what we’re contributing, the other side knows what they’re getting, and now you have a true partnership versus ‘great, you write a cheque for a few years and in a few years maybe someone else writes the cheque’.”
First held in 2000, the always entertaining Red Bull Soapbox Race has become a much-loved event on the calendar for fans of nonmotorised racing
On the content side, Red Bull Media House has no qualms about integrating other brands into its output. The company has worked on branded content with the likes of BFGoodrich, Hyundai, Intel, Jeep and Tag Heuer, and Meier says that will continue so long as those companies continue to invest their marketing dollars in the type of content Red Bull has to offer.
“This is where we are a brand but we’re also a production company and a media house,” he explains. “We bring the brands in and they’re very comfortable sitting side by side; in some cases, we’re not even represented.
“I think that will continue to be a trend and just because brands want to be in content, which is nothing new. We’ve had brand placement in movies and shows since the beginning of time and that will continue. That doesn’t mean that all of these brands will have media houses. Again, we’ve taken a different approach. They are also doing advertising, big advertising, which we don’t do, so everybody sticks to what they know.”
Now everybody is figuring out how you create relevance for content, which has shifted investment power away from the distributors of content
And content is what Red Bull knows best. Perhaps no other largely consumer-focused company has mastered its creation and distribution more effectively, but that is not to say the people behind the brand have all the answers.
As media consumption fragments and digital platforms proliferate in an era of unprecedented disruption, all Meier can do is work to position his company, and the properties it invests in, for the changes to come.
“If you think about traditional media, we all grew up exposed to television, so three channels or five channels, or radio, and you had to position to get on to those channels,” he says.
“That was the make or break, the chicken and egg situation: if you were on [TV] you were getting big, but if you were not big you couldn’t get on, etc, etc. “That got disintermediated, so now everybody is [figuring out] how you create relevance for content, which has shifted power back, from an investment perspective, away from the distributors of content. If you look at all the consolidation going on in the world, it’s really driving that vertical integration.
“But I think [digital] also provides an opportunity for people to express themselves through whatever it is they have an interest in. Because people in the past were like: ‘I’m interested in this specific sport but I think I’m the only one’. Suddenly there’s people in other countries, and these people can find themselves and that can be the beginning of something new.
“I think that’s the legitimacy of the ecosystem that is being built; the business model of that is to be decided in the long-term. There is going to be a lot of fallout, a lot of consolidation, money will flow, the money will always follow where the audiences are. That’s the question: where will they end up? And with whom? And who has the stronghold?”
This article originally appeared in issue 104 of SportsPro Magazine. To find out more or to subscribe, click here.
If the word ‘content’ has come to encapsulate just about everything the sports industry produces and sells – a catch-all term covering live events, media rights, sponsorship packages, hospitality experiences, and everything in between – there can be no mistaking that content, in all its many forms, is Red Bull’s forte.
On any given day, a quick scroll through the homepage of Red Bull TV reveals much about the brand upon which the digital streaming platform has been built.
On arrival, visitors are presented with a sleek selection of autoplay trailers for shows and videos on sports like mountain biking, BASE jumping, motocross and backcountry skiing. Further down, beneath inviting clips of big wave surfers and snowboarders brandishing cans of Red Bull, interviews with aerobatic stunt pilots and acoustic sessions featuring up-and-coming artists, there are feature-length films and documentaries profiling everything from the rise of French house music to skateboarding in the ancient towns of Central America.
Dig a little deeper and it quickly becomes clear that there is plenty more where that came from. Beyond the well-stocked landing page, housed within a hulking array of channels and formats, lies an eclectic menagerie of general interest stories, feats of dumfounding daring and athleticism, and intrepid expeditions to some of the remotest places and people on the planet.
“I think there are a lot of people who are aware that we do this stuff – we do production, we do video – but not always understanding exactly how it all fits together,” says Gerrit Meier, who has been chief executive of Red Bull Media Network and managing director of Red Bull Media House since 2016.
“What was not clear to me, which is amazing, is how ingrained we truly are in finding talent and doing events and how we do this on the content creation side as well.
“I think the overall perception is that we’re doing a lot, and because everything is not connected necessarily – because we’re doing a lot of different disciplines, a lot of different athletes – it’s sometimes hard to get your head around exactly how it all fits.”
Red Bull is indeed an organisation whose tentacles extend through virtually every link in the content value chain. Part beverage brand, part media company, part event operator, part team owner, part marketing agency, part rights distributor – it is, in many ways, an entire ecosystem unto itself; a unique beast with a life of its own that effortlessly straddles just about every consumer passion point under the sun.
Much of that is down to the far-reaching scope of the company’s sprawling multiplatform media arm, whose product range spans TV, mobile, digital, audio, and print. As well as operating its own website and Red Bull TV, its aforementioned over-the-top (OTT) service, Red Bull Media House encompasses Austrian TV network ServusTV, The Red Bulletin print magazine, the production company Terra Mater Factual Studios, and a content library for third-party media organisations known as Red Bull Content Pool.
Even for Meier, who has worked in senior leadership positions across sports, media and entertainment for more than two decades, the sheer scale of Red Bull’s media operation is difficult to fathom. But his remit is not to educate outsiders about what Red Bull does or what the brand stands for. His chief mandate is to grease the gears in a supremely slick in-house media machine, one which houses more than 600 sports events, documentaries and factual entertainment as well as scripted series and feature films, and which is often held up as the quintessential content factory.
“The media house really has the role of providing the competency behind how we think about content,” he explains, “everything from the format, the length, the quality, the production management aspect, where the content should live, what’s the best home for it, is it going to be owned, managed, shared or licensed or co-produced, all the way to the activation. There’s more than that but if you take the value chain of content from idea to delivery, that’s the media house.”
Based at Red Bull’s central hub just outside Salzburg, Austria, Meier is responsible for the company’s global content, production, programming and distribution operations. It is a role for which he has been preparing, knowingly or not, for much of his working life. Before joining Red Bull in late 2016, he spent three years heading up WWE’s international business, where he reported directly to wrestling supremo Vince McMahon. Prior to that role he earned his living in music, first for EMI Group, then at Clear Channel and Spotify, having graduated from Harvard Business School with an MBA in Media.
Taken together, those roles have ensured Meier is well-versed in the salient trends that have shaped and sculpted the entertainment landscape since the late 1990s – from the decline of linear TV and analog music formats to the associated rise of social and digital media. He himself has written extensively on the evolution of content distribution and emerging business models, and he is now putting every ounce of his knowledge into practice at Red Bull.
“For me,” he says, “coming into this with the resources and talent that we have as a company, and the genuine interest, to then get your hands on the opportunity to be in sports, be in culture, create events with our marketing organisation, and build this both for the brand and the second mandate – for the media house, the non-branded side – was amazing.”
Where Red Bull’s public-facing brand encompasses its owned or sponsored events, athletes, teams and media channels – and, of course, its eponymous energy drink – the media house sits somewhere across each of those verticals, promoting, publicising and propping up the overall ecosystem.
“We don’t believe in traditional marketing; we don’t do big television commercials, we’ve never done that,” says Meier. “We believe that we can activate through events and great content, and that’s where we’d rather spend our money. So doing that and having brand relevance absolutely still drives the core business. But we also now do a lot of things where you’re like, ‘wow, that has nothing to do with the brand’, but it still really makes good content.”
When it comes to content creation, the Red Bull approach is perhaps best illustrated by, and most commonly associated with, the world record breaking Red Bull Stratos project of 2012. In arguably the most ambitious publicity stunt ever staged, Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner leapt from a helium stratosphere to become the first human to break the sound barrier without the help of an engine.
Audacious, risky, mesmerising, viral-ready: Baumgartner’s out of- this-world skydive had all the makings of a live Red Bull spectacle. Fundamentally, it boiled down to a show of elite athletic performance and unspeakable daring in a wholly unique setting, replete with stunning visuals and no expense spared. Indeed, the formula was tried and trusted, having already been applied by Red Bull elsewhere – in awe-inspiring projects showcasing the diverse and perilous worlds of BASE jumping, cliff diving, aerobatic racing, free solo climbing, and ice cross downhill.
“I think if we were following trends we would be covering different sports,” laughs Meier. “I think what we’ve managed to do successfully is [to get involved in] so many sports – whether it’s urban sports or other local or niche sports – that have long, deep traditions in specific countries. Obviously we haven’t created them, but they are also not really known beyond a certain audience or beyond a certain territory.
“I think we’ve also been fascinated in involving ourselves with something that is great in itself – great ideas, great people, great stories, highly inspirational, highly aspirational. And then getting ourselves involved to give that wings, right. That is where the model is a little bit different…and that has allowed us to do a lot of sports over the years that now have become Olympic or bigger sports. “I think that is where we like to see ourselves. We want to play a role, to give great ideas and great things the uplift that they deserve.”
We want to play a role, to give great ideas and great things the uplift that they deserve
While Red Bull has found avenues to invest, and enjoyed considerable success, in mainstream sports like soccer, golf and Formula One, Meier is keen to stress the extent to which it has helped raise the profile of many smaller disciplines, not to mention the hundreds of sponsored athletes with whom it works. He notes how the company has achieved notable results by packaging independent events into yearlong series – such as the Red Bull Signature Series, a previously disparate run of world renowned action sports competitions – to provide consistency for the athletes and fans, to bring about new opportunities to build seasonal narratives, and to instil greater value for broadcasters and commercial partners.
Today, Red Bull’s events portfolio spans everything from elite professional series to amateur participation events, niche curiosities like the Red Bull Soapbox Race, and more purpose led occasions such as the Wings for Life World Run. The company has never been shy of crossing cultural or geographical boundaries, either. Event series like Red Bull Batalla de los Gallos, the hugely popular Spanish-language freestyle rap competition, and Red Bull BC One, which features many of the world’s top break dancers competing in cities across the globe, are evidence of a brand committed to championing subcultures that have long existed on the periphery.
For Meier, who believes events like dance cyphers and rap battles are “highly localised platforms for expression” in much the same way most sports are, Red Bull’s involvement in those types of fringe, youthful pastimes is only natural. “That type of stuff just works,” he says. “We just had our anniversary for BC One. It’s not even a subculture anymore – it’s a real, meaningful, strong community. When you see them [the B-Boys], they’re all with each other – they’re not against each other.”
And therein lies the true essence of Red Bull’s business. Its ability to bounce comfortably between multifarious worlds and communities, whether by creating live events, producing content or signing athlete endorsers, and to be ubiquitous but in a credible and authentic way, sets it apart from many other organisations that might have a harder time fitting in.
“We track a lot of things,” explains Meier, when asked how Red Bull measures return on investment. “Some of that is objective – there’s obviously a certain objectivity to business growth. But we also track on a more subjective level – something that you can’t really quantify – and again something that takes a really long time.
“It also separates us. Where we have the opportunity to make commitments to certain athletes for sticking with us for a long time, and if they have a relationship for the rest of their life because of the result of it, because of what you were able to achieve and where you could play a hand in their success, how do you define that? If you do this in a scaleable way, as we have, you create something where you just generate a lot of positivity, and that positivity of course always returns back to growing your business itself.
“But, again, it’s a different kind of approach and if it was that easy or that measurable, then I think other people would be doing it. That’s really driven by the original vision of the company and I think we’re really staying true to that.”
Red Bull’s world
At last October’s Sportel sports media and marketing convention the Red Bull Media House stand occupied a specially constructed meeting and hospitality area directly outside the main entrance. Such prominent positioning is in keeping with Red Bull’s style, of course, but it is also a way of letting attendees know that the company is very much open for business.
“The ‘what’ is only as important as the ‘where’,” Meier tells SportsPro at the event. “What do we create, but then also, where do we deliver it to? That is what makes something like Sportel interesting because obviously this is where content and distribution hits, and everybody understands how that is changing.”
That Red Bull Media House is so openly hawking its wares at an industry conference like Sportel says something about its evolving distribution strategy. Though the company continues to operate its own branded media platforms – “which are super important to us because it’s the one place where you can get everything,” says Meier – it also knows that effective content delivery relies on meeting audiences on their terms.
What’s more, with so many traditional media companies and nascent OTT operators currently in the market for rights beyond premium live content to build out their digital offerings, it is fair to say the youth-focused, lifestyle-led programming Red Bull has to offer is only growing more sought-after.
“We recognise that audiences live where they live, and some audiences don’t want to move from where they live,” says Meier, who has himself rarely spoken to the media or at industry gatherings since assuming his current role. “It’s very clear, for example, that people who live on YouTube, a lot of them will consume your content on YouTube as long as they can stay on YouTube. I think Netflix kind of sees themselves in that same position.
“For us, going where the audiences are is super important. If there is somewhere where the audience can be found, and we can contribute with great content, then that’s where we want to be. I think that is where, over the last year and a half, we’ve changed significantly our approach to be truly audience-led.”
That shift in strategy is undoubtedly a sign of the times, but it is also a measure of Red Bull’s holistic, platform-agnostic approach to content distribution. For Meier, the sprawling nature of the business, and the variety of its output, means that the company competes with everyone and no one, which in turn enables it to work with just about anyone.
“From our perspective, we’re not pursuing paid models,” he continues. “We believe we create really, really good content which has value and people would love to see it, and we want to provide that. If that extends to third parties, then we license or we co-produce or we co-programme. That’s really important to us as well because we can be an enabler for ideas for those broadcasters. That’s the space that we like to play in.
“I think the benefit we have is that we can be a partner to anyone, right. We aren’t really competitive to anything. Sometimes we can bring athletes, sometimes it’s about someone else’s event, we can create content that has nothing to do with any of it. That’s a very unique position, so we look at how we can create the biggest benefit of that to the audiences.”
In sport, Red Bull Media House maintains media partnerships with several major federations and properties. Since 2012, it has been the exclusive media production and broadcast partner of the International Cycling Union (UCI) Mountain Bike World Cup, for which it has also held global distribution rights since 2016. It also part-owns, operates and airs the Beach Volleyball Major Series, which is officially sanctioned by the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB), while it retains an interest in WRC Promoter GmbH, the commercial and promotional arm of the World Rally Championship (WRC).
“For us, UCI is a great example,” says Meier, outlining his company’s approach to such partnerships. “The UCI has really billed itself as the premium product, the premium event series in that space, and hopefully with some of the production, with the way we can evolve over the years, there is a role we can play. Again, the sports themselves have got much greater traction. Just look at sales of mountain bikes; when I grew up, a BMX was as far as you could get! Now you see that this whole industry has come out of it and, again, if we can step back and say we had a part in that, that is good satisfaction for us.
“They’re the roles we like to play and they’re the partnerships we seek. The partnerships we don’t seek are the ones that are purely about monetary value; that’s usually not what we do. There are enough brands out there that play in that space and that’s great and that gives a lot of money to those sports and the athletes that need it.”
In Red Bull’s world, then, the traditional notions of sponsorship and media rights agreements don’t apply. Flexibility and creative freedom are guiding principles, and there are no rules when it comes to forging partnerships.
“Neymar Jr’s Five is a great example,” continues Meier, referring to the five-a-side event series the brand has created with the Brazilian soccer star. “Obviously we’re not the ones who found Neymar, built Neymar – Neymar is Neymar.
“So when you deal with someone who gets big cheques from big companies and big brands, coming up with a brand new concept around a new event series that benefits the local athletes, the local audiences, build something up that, as a concept format, can grow and grow in a scaleable way and that then pays back into his foundation, now you already have a different partnership because here we can bring in our event activation, our local activation, our production capabilities.
“That is where we know what we’re contributing, the other side knows what they’re getting, and now you have a true partnership versus ‘great, you write a cheque for a few years and in a few years maybe someone else writes the cheque’.”
On the content side, Red Bull Media House has no qualms about integrating other brands into its output. The company has worked on branded content with the likes of BFGoodrich, Hyundai, Intel, Jeep and Tag Heuer, and Meier says that will continue so long as those companies continue to invest their marketing dollars in the type of content Red Bull has to offer.
“This is where we are a brand but we’re also a production company and a media house,” he explains. “We bring the brands in and they’re very comfortable sitting side by side; in some cases, we’re not even represented.
“I think that will continue to be a trend and just because brands want to be in content, which is nothing new. We’ve had brand placement in movies and shows since the beginning of time and that will continue. That doesn’t mean that all of these brands will have media houses. Again, we’ve taken a different approach. They are also doing advertising, big advertising, which we don’t do, so everybody sticks to what they know.”
Now everybody is figuring out how you create relevance for content, which has shifted investment power away from the distributors of content
And content is what Red Bull knows best. Perhaps no other largely consumer-focused company has mastered its creation and distribution more effectively, but that is not to say the people behind the brand have all the answers.
As media consumption fragments and digital platforms proliferate in an era of unprecedented disruption, all Meier can do is work to position his company, and the properties it invests in, for the changes to come.
“If you think about traditional media, we all grew up exposed to television, so three channels or five channels, or radio, and you had to position to get on to those channels,” he says.
“That was the make or break, the chicken and egg situation: if you were on [TV] you were getting big, but if you were not big you couldn’t get on, etc, etc. “That got disintermediated, so now everybody is [figuring out] how you create relevance for content, which has shifted power back, from an investment perspective, away from the distributors of content. If you look at all the consolidation going on in the world, it’s really driving that vertical integration.
“But I think [digital] also provides an opportunity for people to express themselves through whatever it is they have an interest in. Because people in the past were like: ‘I’m interested in this specific sport but I think I’m the only one’. Suddenly there’s people in other countries, and these people can find themselves and that can be the beginning of something new.
“I think that’s the legitimacy of the ecosystem that is being built; the business model of that is to be decided in the long-term. There is going to be a lot of fallout, a lot of consolidation, money will flow, the money will always follow where the audiences are. That’s the question: where will they end up? And with whom? And who has the stronghold?”
This article originally appeared in issue 104 of SportsPro Magazine. To find out more or to subscribe, click here.
