HANOVER, Germany – Dietrich Mateschitz, the Austrian man who turned Thailand’s caffeinated energy drink into a multibillion-dollar Red Bull empire, died on Saturday. He was 78 years old.
His company, Red Bull, notified the employee of the death in an email. The cause was cancer, according to German and Austrian news reports. Red Bull did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the 1980s, Mr. Mateschitz, then a salesman for a company that made personal hygiene products and toothpaste, discovered elixirs were sold in Asian pharmacies for purchase. for workers and truck drivers. He contacted the manufacturer of one of them, Chaleo YoovidhyaThe drink is called Krathing Daeng, which translates into English as “red bull”.
The two formed a partnership, and after three years of tinkering with Thai recipes, Mr. Mateschitz introduced a Westernized version of the energy drink to his native Austria in 1987.
Despite concerns about the drink’s high sugar and caffeine content – it is sometimes banned in various countries, and some health officials have questioned the safety of taurine, an amino acid that is an essential ingredient. main part – the company was successful and by 2021 alone has sold 9.804 billion cans of Red Bull around the world, according to its website.
But the Red Bull drink, which spawned an army of competitors, quickly became a marketing tool with massive investments in sports and media companies. According to the report, Mr. Mateschitz spent 30% of his profits on public relations and marketing.
Through his extensive sponsorship of sports teams and athletes, both conventional and cutting-edge, he has built a bold and high-performance image for the beverage. For Red Bull, The New York Times wrote in 2006“Sport is marketing, and marketing is sport – and the company won’t stop until the two are one.”
Mr. Mateschitz is also known as a collector of real estate, cars and planes. In the last years of his life, he added a media empire with TV channels and magazines mainly focused on sports but controversial including a channel that gave voice to extreme opinions. right and opposite.
Nearly always tanned and bearded for three days, he avoids suits, red carpets, and reporters he can’t control. Despite his driving duties being public, he has kept his personal life a secret, allegedly having purchased a Social gossip magazines to stop it include him.
In 2004, he bought his first Formula 1 team and another in 2006. Team Red Bull has become one of the strongest teams in the world, winning 89 races. The team’s star driver, Max Verstappen, won his second Formula 1 title This month, and on Sunday, the day after Mr. Mateschitz’s death, the team won the builder’s championship for the fifth time, the award for the best performance of the racing season.
The investment has paid off.
Mr. Mateschitz said in a 2010 interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel. “With this philosophy, we have succeeded in making Red Bull one of the most valuable brands in the world.”
He also invested in big football teams – one that is still one of the strongest in Germany and one in New York, of course, New York Red Bulls – as well as extreme sports, such as surfing, motor racing, mountain biking, cliff diving and windsurfing.
The company even created a series of air races – originally called the Red Bull Air Race – in which stunt planes would run through slalom slides made of giant pylons.
Mr. Mateschitz’s 49% stake in Red Bull (the rest is held by Mr. Chaleo and his son) makes him one of the richest people in the world. Forbes estimates his fortune to hit $19.4 billion this year, making him the 75th richest individual in the world.
Dietrich Mateschitz was born on May 20, 1944, in St. Marein im Mürztal, Austria, a small town 30 miles north of Graz. After studying business administration at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, he worked in the sales department and as a marketing director at the German company Blendax, a manufacturer of personal hygiene products, until his success with Red Bull in 1987.
He has never been married and is survived by his partner, Marion Feichtner, and a son, Mark Mateschitz, from a previous partnership.
Although his marketing focus is on sports, Mr. Mateschitz delves into far-right politics. The German left-wing newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung described his channel ServusTV as “the master channel of Austria’s right-wing populism” and referred to news site Mr. Mateschitz founded it as “Breitbart from the Alps”, a reference to the rightmost US site.
In a rare interview with Paper shirt 2017he criticized Germany’s asylum policy, worried about political correctness and spoke favorably of President Donald J. Trump.
Although he owes much of his success to his ability to promote his brand, he still enjoys a life away from the limelight for himself. He gives few interviews and avoids social events where the paparazzi are present. Even the company email announcing his death asked employees to “express your grief quietly and conservatively.” The Red Bull website has no official announcement.
But he has a certain eye for attention-grabbing stunts. In 2012, he sponsored an attempt by an Austrian daredevil, Felix Baumgartner, to perform the world’s tallest jump. Witnessed by millions of people streaming, Mr. Baumgartner, in a space suit and helmet emblazoned with the Red Bull logo, flew into the stratosphere in a hot air balloon and then jumped from a height of more than 24 miles in the New Mexico desert.
When Mr. Baumgartner landed, after becoming first human to break the sound barrier Under his strength, Mr. Mateschitz was on the ground, waiting to greet him.
But there’s always a difference between the bold and athletic displays he sponsors and the drink itself.
Mr. Mateschitz told the media that he is a devoted consumer, claiming to drink 12 cans of Red Bull a day.
But in 2006, he said he had gained too much weight. A few years before that, he says, he had to switch to the diet version.
