Dietrich Mateschitz (20 May 1944 – 22 October 2022) was an Austrian billionaire businessman.

He was the co-founder and 49% owner of Red Bull GmbH. As of October 2021, Mateschitz's net worth was estimated at US$25.4 billion.

Mateschitz worked in marketing for Unilever and Blendax. While travelling in Thailand, he discovered the drink Krating Daeng, which he adapted into Red Bull. He founded Red Bull GmbhH in 1984 and launched it in Austria in 1987.

His company acquired or founded several sports teams around the world, including four-time Constructors' Champions Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso in Formula One, and association football teams including FC Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig.

Early life and education

Mateschitz was born on 20 May 1944, in Sankt Marein im Mürztal, Styria, Nazi Germany (now in Austria), to a family of Croatian ancestry; some sources state that he had relatives in the Zadar area of Croatia. His mother's side was from Styria, his father's side was from Maribor (now in Slovenia); both his parents were school teachers. He attended the Hochschule für Welthandel (now Vienna University of Economics and Business), where after ten years, he graduated with a marketing degree in 1972.

Career

Mateschitz's first employer was Unilever, where he worked marketing detergents. He subsequently moved to Blendax, the German cosmetics company (since bought by Procter & Gamble), where he worked on, among other things, the marketing of Blendax toothpaste. It was as part of his travels for Blendax that he discovered Krating Daeng, the drink that would later become Red Bull. In 1984, he founded Red Bull GmbH with Chaleo Yoovidhya, launching the brand in Austria in 1987. Subsequently, he turned the Red Bull drink into a world market leader among energy drinks.

Mateschitz also owned Seitenblicke, Austria's top society magazine, but avoided the celebrity circuit and watched most Formula One races on TV despite owning two teams.

Mateschitz owned ServusTV, a television channel based in Salzburg. The channel was criticised for allegedly downplaying the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. The channel is considered to have a right-wing position, and was one of only three media outlets given a press pass to the "Defenders of Europe" conference of right-wing and far-right activists in October 2016. In May 2016, Mateschitz announced he would shut down the channel as his employees had requested to form a works council; he changed his mind when no such council was formed.

Sports

Mateschitz's brands are consistently marketed as associated with the physical and mental attributes needed for various types of extreme sports through commercial sponsorship.

Motorsport

Red Bull formerly owned more than 60 percent of the Sauber Formula One motor racing team, and was the team's main sponsor. However, Red Bull ended its relationship with Sauber at the end of 2001 after the team opted to sign Kimi Räikkönen as one of their drivers for the 2001 season instead of Red Bull protege Enrique Bernoldi. In November 2004, Mateschitz bought the Jaguar Racing Formula One team from its previous owners, Ford, and renamed it Red Bull Racing. The fee was undisclosed. In September 2005, Mateschitz joined forces with his close friend and former Formula One driver, Gerhard Berger, to purchase the Italian-registered Minardi team from its Australian owner Paul Stoddart. This team was meant to serve as a Junior team to Red Bull Racing and was renamed as Scuderia Toro Rosso (Italian: Red Bull Stable) in 2006, and then AlphaTauri in 2020.

Sebastian Vettel won the 2008 Italian Grand Prix for Toro Rosso. His victory at the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix was the first for Red Bull Racing. In 2010, Red Bull Racing won the Formula One World Constructors' Championship and Vettel won the Drivers' Championship. They then went on to win both titles for the next three years running in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Eight years later they won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship again with Max Verstappen in the 2021 season, while finishing runners-up in the Formula One World Constructors' Championship which was won by Mercedes. In the 2022 season, Verstappen retained his title, the sixth by a Red Bull driver.

From 2006 to 2011, Mateschitz also owned Team Red Bull who competed in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and the K&N Pro Series East.

In late 2004, he bought the A1-Ring racing circuit, which had formerly hosted the Formula One Austrian Grand Prix, and renamed it the Red Bull Ring. The circuit re-opened in May 2011 and hosted a round of the 2011 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters season. Although Mateschitz had stated that there were no plans for it to return to the Formula One calendar, in December 2012 Red Bull notified the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile they would be open to hosting a Grand Prix. In July 2013, Red Bull announced the return of the Austrian Grand Prix to the Formula One World Championship in 2014. The race took place on 22 June 2014 and was won by Nico Rosberg, driving for Mercedes.

Football and ice hockey

In April 2005, he bought the Austrian football club SV Austria Salzburg and in March 2006, he bought the American club MetroStars; both clubs were subsequently renamed after his famous drink, as Red Bull Salzburg and New York Red Bulls, respectively. In 2007, Red Bull founded Red Bull Brasil, a football team based in Campinas, and in 2019 the company acquired Clube Atlético Bragantino also in the state of São Paulo. In 2008, Red Bull founded Red Bull Ghana, a football academy in Sogakope which was sold to Dutch club Feyenoord in 2014.

In May 2009, he initiated a German football club called RB Leipzig after buying the license from SSV Markranstädt to play in the Oberliga, the fourth tier of the German football league system. The team rose to the top-tier Bundesliga in 2016, made the UEFA Champions League semi-finals in 2020 and won the DFB-Pokal in 2022.

He was also the owner of the ice hockey clubs EC Red Bull Salzburg and EHC Red Bull München, which were acquired and rebranded in 2000 and 2012 respectively.

Philanthropy

Mateschitz was co-founder of the Wings for Life foundation that supports spinal cord research together with Heinz Kinigadner. Since 2014, the foundation has organised the Wings for Life World Run to raise funds.

He also initiated the World Stunt Awards, an annual fundraiser to benefit his Taurus Foundation, which, according to its website, helps injured stunt professionals.

Personal life and death

Mateschitz never married, but had a son named Mark who was born in the early 1990s. As of the time of Mateschitz's death, his son was the managing director of one of his investment companies. Mateschitz rarely gave interviews, and refused to answer questions about his son. Mateschitz was in a relationship for two years with the mother of his son, and later had a long-term partner named Marion Feichtner. He was known as a recluse, stating "I don’t believe in 50 friends. I believe in a smaller number. Nor do I care about society events. It’s the most senseless use of time. When I do go out, from time to time, it’s just to convince myself again that I’m not missing a lot".

He held a pilot's licence and enjoyed flying a Falcon 900 and a Piper Super Cub. He had his own hangar with a collection of old planes, including the last Douglas DC-6B to be produced, and which once belonged to Yugoslav Marshal Josip Broz Tito.

Mateschitz and his Bundesliga club RB Leipzig faced backlash in 2017 over comments made in a Kleine Zeitung interview in which he suggested that Austria should close its borders to refugees and expressed support for Donald Trump and other populist positions.

Mateschitz lived in Fuschl am See, Austria but also owned the island of Laucala in Fiji, which he bought from the Forbes family for £7 million. He spent millions on acquiring and conserving houses and castles in the Austrian Alps, saying "I want to enjoy these places myself, but I also want to take care of them".

He died following a long period of illness on 22 October 2022, at the age of 78. His death was announced to the Red Bull team minutes before the start of qualifying for the 2022 United States Grand Prix.