A Soft (Drink) Corporate Takeover? Newcastle-Bath at Kingston Park

Newcastle is no stranger to a re-brand. It started life under Roman rule as Pons Aelius in 122 AD, given the same name as the bridge (which took its moniker from the family name of Emperor Hadrian, whose eponymous wall ran through land occupied by the current city) that spanned the Tyne around the site of the modern-day Swing Bridge. There is little evidence of continued settlement following the end of Roman occupation, with the area eventually gaining the name of Monkchester at some unknown point in the Anglo-Saxon era despite an apparent lack of monks. The name stuck until 1080, when the Normans decided to go back to the Roman technique of naming the town after its most important landmark, the ‘new castle’ they built to defend against incursions by the Scots.

Newcastle’s rugby team has chalked up an even more impressive list of aliases, despite its hometown having a 1,755-year head start in variable nomenclature. Established as Gosforth Football Club in 1877, they continued as such - apart from a brief dalliance with the name Northumberland Football Club in the 1880s – until they became Newcastle Gosforth in 1990. They then flirted with being Newcastle Rugby Club in 1996 before settling on Newcastle Falcons in 1997. That name survived 28 years until, amidst a financial crisis that saw former owner Semore Kurdi put the club up for sale in November 2024 and a player recruitment freeze imposed in March 2025, Newcastle were acquired by Austrian drinks manufacturer, Red Bull.

Of all the identity changes the north-eastern team has been through, this is perhaps the most significant for the organisation and, potentially, English rugby as a whole. It has the potential to upend the longstanding financing model for professional rugby teams in England and Wales, who have consistently failed to make profits (all Prem clubs have been lossmaking since at least the 2021/22 seasons according to recent reports) and have therefore relied on wealthy benefactors to provide regular cash injections to keep them afloat (the 2024 Leonard Curtis Rugby Finance Report found that seven of ten Premiership clubs would be insolvent without contributions from ownership).

Some have hailed Red Bull’s investment as a sign of hope for a more sustainable future for professional rugby, in which the sport can attract the significant cashflow required in the short- to medium-term to maintain athletic standards and raise its profile and attract new audiences. This would lead, the optimists say, to a future in which Premiership clubs make healthy profits and the financial collapses of teams like Worcester, Wasps, and London Irish are a thing of the past. But there are serious questions to be asked. English rugby may be no stranger to corporate investment, but Red Bull is a very different proposition. It is prudent to look at its acquisitions in other sports, particularly football, to get a sense of the changes their involvement may bring about.

The principal allegation levelled against Red Bull’s involvement in sports teams appears to be that the company has little regard for the history and heritage of the clubs it acquires. A deep dive on the subject by Nancy Froston of The Athletic describes how Red Bull has, in effect, turned its various football teams into identikit franchises, three quarters of whom play in venues called Red Bull Arena, that have abandoned their prior identities and histories. This had led to major protests from fans, with a group of Austria Salzburg fans opting to abandon the team upon Red Bull’s takeover and instead set up a new club under the old name that started life in the lowest tier of Austrian football. Elsewhere, as Froston relates, Bundesliga fans set against the corporatisation of their league (Red Bull have had to get creative with their Leipzig team’s name, calling it RB Leipzig and claiming the RB stands for Rasen Ball – ‘lawn ball’ in English – and not Red Bull to avoid German rules against naming teams after corporate sponsors) have involved away fans boycotting games at Leipzig’s Red Bull Arena, some clubs refusing to display Leipzig’s Red Bull-themed logo on their big screams, and, most dramatically, Dynamo Dresden fans chucking severed bulls’ heads onto the pitch during a match.

There are potential costs in terms of loss of history, local context, and fan engagement, then, that arise from this purchase. Curious to see what it felt like at Kingston Park in this first season with Red Bull on board, I went along to Newcastle’s pre-Christmas clash against Bath to investigate.

Still Kingston Park... for now

Reporting in The Guardian suggests that, in the 24 hours following confirmation of Red Bull’s acquisition of the team, Newcastle sold more season tickets than they did during the entirety of the previous campaign. Earlier Prem matches have been sell-outs and today continues that trend, marking a significant improvement on the 23/24 average of 61% of tickets sold per game according to the 2025 Leonard Curtis Rugby Finance Report. There is an undeniable buzz about the place and a pleasing mixture of people of all ages. This change to the team has clearly piqued interest and has kept people coming despite Newcastle sitting dead last in the table at 0-6 just before Christmas. Even the uncovered terraces are packed, despite the utterly bleak weather.

A cynic at heart, I had expected the Kingston Park experience to be a relentless corporate onslaught. Part of me wanted to bemoan the transformation of a struggling, but historic outfit into a crass marketing vehicle for an undrinkable beverage that smells like horse piss. But, at least for now, it really doesn’t seem that bad.

Sure, there are a lot of drinks on offer where Red Bull is the mixer. The kinds of drinks that only underage kids and freshers would imbibe (appropriately, Red Bull marketed Newcastle’s first 25/26 Prem home game to new university students). But there are plenty of alternatives.

There is, as expected, a great deal of Red Bull branding all over the ground and many walls have been painted in the brand’s shade of navy blue. It’s also all over the new club clothing and merchandise, but all replica kit is adorned with sponsors’ names and insignia, so it doesn’t feel all that jarring. It is a little weird to hear 10,000 people chant the name of a soft drink in what proves to be a vain effort to spur their team on to victory.

Some of the branding also seems a little amateurish. It’s not quite clear whether the team is Newcastle Red Bull or Newcastle Red Bulls. The team logo is singular, but the name printed around the band of woolly hats is plural. The announcer uses singular and plural interchangeably, while fans chant the name in the plural. This first step in establishing a new club identity feels like a stumble.

Branded hats on display

Early results on the field – like today’s 50-14 evisceration at the hands of Bath – have been dire in the Prem, but more promising in the Challenge and Prem Cups. Red Bull have stated that this is a long-term investment aimed at ‘empowering the club to reach its full potential’. Their public commitment to ‘developing local talent through a strengthened academy program’ is promising, particularly given that, as Froston’s Athletic piece recounts, they have focused on developing homegrown players in their football teams. Renewed investment, coupled with the historical strength of Newcastle’s academy system and Red Bull having the financial resources to hold on to academy players instead of seeing them move elsewhere for higher wages as has so often been the case, could yield a more sustainable and competitive future for Newcastle rugby.

However, reasons to worry remain. Newcastle have stated that they will be ‘embracing the innovative approach that Red Bull has brought to its sports initiatives across the world’. That innovative approach seems to be based on using sports teams and sportspeople as content farms in a global marketing assault. Some of Newcastle’s recent signings seem aimed at creating viral moments where the Red Bull logo will get plenty of exposure – Christian Wade breaking the Premiership’s all-time try record in a Newcastle shirt might serve to get the brand out there, for example. That many current players are signed to one-year contracts suggests that there may be further splashy signings next offseason. One wonders how long Kingston Park will hold onto its name, given that Red Bull are reportedly keen to redevelop the site.

For now, then, it might not feel all that different. Newcastle are still a terrible rugby team. Kingston Park is still a relatively modest stadium with a core of dedicated fans and curious newcomers. But this could go a couple of different ways. There could be a bright future where the discomfiture of seeing the corporatisation of an historic team is outweighed by the financial security and competitive edge their money can buy. There is another, bleaker outcome in which Newcastle’s identity is subsumed into the global Red Bull brand and the team become just another meme factory to sell unpalatable drinks to overstimulated children. Only time will tell which will come to pass.