Red Bull’s days of building its image on cliff dives and air races are giving way to something far more conventional – and far more important for professional cycling’s balance sheet. As reported by Le Monde, the energy drink giant’s sports empire is “settling down”, shifting focus from high-risk adrenaline shows to mainstream, regulated properties such as Formula 1 and WorldTour cycling.
At the heart of that pivot sits Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe. In 2024 Red Bull quietly acquired a 51% controlling stake in the German WorldTour squad’s holding companies, later rebranding the team and flooding it with resources. The clearest statement of intent arrived with the blockbuster signing of Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) from 2026, on an estimated €6–8 million per year, a salary that puts him behind only Tadej Pogačar in the current pay league.
This is a very different Red Bull to the one shaped by late co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz, who built the brand on spectacular, high-risk projects like Red Bull Stratos and the now-cancelled Red Bull Air Race. After his death in 2022, the company was reorganised under a more corporate leadership headed by Oliver Mintzlaff. Motorsport adviser Helmut Marko has openly described how the old, highly personal decision-making model had to be replaced by a system, not a single strongman.
That “system” is now being applied to cycling. Mintzlaff has framed the project in F1 terms: a long-term programme to win grand tours and the sport’s biggest races by deploying Red Bull’s performance science, nutrition and data know-how across a superteam structure. Team boss Ralph Denk has spoken of finding “the Max Verstappen of cycling”, and, with Evenepoel locked in, he might already feel halfway there.
For the WorldTour, the consequences are immediate and structural. Red Bull is no longer just a helmet logo on Wout van Aert or Tom Pidcock, it is a majority owner of a team with one of the sport’s largest budgets. Rider agent Alex Carera has warned that “the arrival of Red Bull will only raise the value of the biggest riders even more” in an interview with Cyclingnews in 2024, and the Evenepoel deal is already the benchmark for elite GC contracts.
At the same time, the UCI’s rulebook looks undercooked. The governing body forbids ownership of multiple teams, yet allows Red Bull to own one WorldTour outfit while sponsoring stars on rival squads. Officials have so far opted for quiet tolerance, attracted by the money and visibility, even as competitive parity drifts further from reach.
Zoom out, and the implication for cycling is exciting. Red Bull is pivoting away from bespoke spectacles that can be cancelled when interest dips, and towards season-long championships with guaranteed global broadcast slots. Cycling now sits in the same strategic column as Formula 1, RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg – a core media platform rather than a quirky side project.
For riders and teams, that should signal two things. First, the Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe project is unlikely to be a short-lived branding exercise. Second, the arrival of a fully corporatised superteam will intensify an arms race already squeezing mid-tier squads. The real test of this new era will come in 2026, when Evenepoel rolls to the Tour de France start line in a Red Bull jersey and the rest of the peloton has to decide whether to chase, copy or hope the wings eventually get clipped.
Cover image credit: Zac Williams/SWpix.com
