Red Bull

• 1. Introduction

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  Red Bull arrived in Austria on the 1st of April 1987, a date that might have seemed like a joke to anyone watching. A slim silver-and-blue can, a single flavour, no celebrity endorser, no television campaign built around lifestyle aspiration. Just a carbonated drink with a strange name that an Austrian entrepreneur had tinkered into existence after a business trip to Thailand.

  By 2023, Red Bull held a 13 percent share of the global energy drink market. More than 100 billion cans had been sold worldwide since that first Austrian launch. In 2025 alone, customers bought over 13.9 billion cans. The third most valuable soft drink brand in the world in 2021, it sat behind only Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

  How did that happen? The answer runs through a Thai truck-driver's tonic, a jet-lagged businessman, a handshake over a 49-49-2 ownership split, and a marketing philosophy that refused to advertise the drink the way drinks were supposed to be advertised. This documentary follows that path from Bangkok to Salzburg, and from Salzburg to every corner of the planet.

• 2. The Drink From Thailand

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  Chaleo Yoovidhya launched Krating Daeng in Thailand in 1976. The name translates to "red gaur" in English, a gaur being a large wild bovine native to South and Southeast Asia. Thai truck drivers and labourers embraced it. It was a working person's drink, cheap and functional, built for long shifts and overnight hauls.

  Chaleo ran T.C. Pharmaceutical, and Krating Daeng was one of his products. The drink was not carbonated. It was not positioned as premium. It had no interest in ski resorts or nightclubs. It was simply doing a job for people who needed one.

  When Dietrich Mateschitz arrived in Thailand in 1982, he was working for the German manufacturer Blendax, which was later acquired by Procter and Gamble. He was there on business. He had no particular plan to change the global beverage industry. Then, somewhere in Bangkok, he drank a can of Krating Daeng and felt his jet lag lift. That detail, often repeated and possibly embellished over the years, was the seed of a fortune. Mateschitz tracked down Chaleo and proposed a partnership.

• 3. The Deal in Fuschl am See

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  In 1984, Mateschitz and Chaleo Yoovidhya co-founded Red Bull GmbH. The company was not born in a glass tower in Vienna or a sleek headquarters in Geneva. It was registered in Fuschl am See, a village of roughly 1,500 people near Salzburg, Austria. The company still operates from there today.

  Each partner put in US$500,000 of personal savings. They divided ownership with deliberate precision: 49 percent for Mateschitz, 49 percent for Chaleo, and the remaining two percent for Chaleo's son Chalerm. Mateschitz would run the company. The family connection was written in from the start.

  The product they built together was not Krating Daeng. Mateschitz adapted the formula to suit Western tastes. Carbonation was one key change. The flavour was reformulated. Pricing would be positioned at the top of the market rather than the bottom. What Chaleo had built for labourers, Mateschitz intended to sell to skiers and club-goers. The flavouring itself, though, is still produced in Bangkok and exported to the rest of the world to this day.

  By 2008, Forbes magazine listed both Chaleo and Mateschitz among the 250th richest people in the world, each with an estimated net worth of US$4 billion.

• 4. Building the Brand Myth

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  Red Bull did not follow a conventional advertising path. Rather than running television spots or print campaigns in the style of Coca-Cola, the company built what it called a "brand myth" through its association with extreme sports events.

  The entry point was Austrian ski resorts. Red Bull positioned itself as a premium, upscale product in an environment where status and performance were already part of the culture. Price was a conscious signal. Krating Daeng remained on shelves as a lower-cost option; Red Bull sat at the expensive end. In countries where both are sold, they still anchor opposite ends of the price spectrum.

  Expansion across Europe followed during the 1990s, reaching Hungary, Slovenia, Germany, the Czech Republic, Croatia, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Germany and the UK came in 1994. The United States entered the picture in 1996 via California. The Middle East followed in 2000. The Philippines arrived much later, in 2012.

  The UK's Advertising Standards Authority imposed advertising restrictions on Red Bull in 2001, responding to complaints that had been recorded as early as 1997. The company's performance-based claims attracted sustained scrutiny from regulators and consumers alike, a pattern that would eventually produce a major legal settlement.

• 5. Legal Turbulence

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  France, Denmark, and Norway initially refused to permit Red Bull's sale at all. French authorities focused their concern on taurine, one of the drink's key ingredients. A version without taurine was introduced for that market. The European Commission challenged France's decision, and the matter reached the European Court of Justice, which partially upheld France's position in 2004. The French food safety agency eventually relented in 2008, having been unable to establish a definitive health risk.

  In 2013, Red Bull sent a letter to the Redwell Brewery, a Norwich-based operation with eight employees, demanding it change its name. Red Bull argued the name sounded too similar to its own brand and could confuse customers or tarnish the trademark. The two parties reached a settlement that allowed Redwell to keep its name.

  A far costlier dispute came in 2014, when Red Bull agreed to a US$13 million settlement to resolve two consumer class action lawsuits filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs, named as Benjamin Careathers, David Wolf, and Miguel Almarez, claimed that Red Bull had made performance-enhancing claims not supported by scientific evidence. The court approved the settlement on the 1st of May 2015. Customers who had submitted claims could receive either a US$10 cash payment or US$15 in Red Bull products, within 150 days of any appeal being resolved.

• 6. Inside the Can

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  A standard 250 ml can of Red Bull contains roughly 40 to 80 mg of caffeine, though the exact amount varies by country because some nations impose legal ceilings on caffeine in beverages. Alongside caffeine, the drink includes taurine, a range of B vitamins (B2, B3, B5, B6, and B12), glucuronolactone, and simple sugars in the form of sucrose and glucose. The liquid is buffered by carbonated water, sodium bicarbonate, and magnesium carbonate, though some flavour variants substitute a trisodium citrate and citric acid buffer instead.

  Regular consumption at high volumes can cause mild to moderate euphoria, agitation, anxiety, irritability, and insomnia. These effects trace primarily to caffeine rather than to any ingredient unique to Red Bull.

  The sugar-free line replaces sucrose and glucose with artificial sweeteners: acesulfame K and aspartame in one formulation, sucralose in another. Red Bull Sugarfree arrived first, with a flavour profile distinct from the original. Red Bull Total Zero, which contains zero calories, followed in 2012. Red Bull Zero launched in 2018 with a different sugar-free recipe, one deliberately engineered to taste closer to the classic can.

  A concentrated variant called Red Bull Energy Shot, packaged in 60 ml cans, was unveiled in 2009.

• 7. A Widening Shelf

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  Red Bull Editions launched in 2013, the company's first systematic attempt to build a flavour range. The initial three were cranberry, blueberry, and lime. Since then the line has grown considerably: a sea blue juneberry, a peach-nectarine, a winter fuji apple-ginger, an iced vanilla berry, a pink raspberry, a yellow tropical berries, a coconut-blueberry, an amber strawberry-apricot, and a red watermelon. Some flavours appear only in specific regions or during particular seasons.

  Beyond the energy drink category, Red Bull released a cola product called Simply Cola in 2008. A reformulated version appeared in 2019 as part of the Organics line. The Organics by Red Bull range launched in 2018 with four flavours: bitter lemon, ginger ale, tonic water, and the new Simply Cola. The Organics line used organic ingredients rather than the synthetic blend in the main energy drink.

  The Yoovidhya family, Chaleo's descendants, currently control 51 percent of Red Bull GmbH. For reasons the company describes as technical, they also hold the trademark in Europe and the United States. The company that began as a single-flavour drink aimed at Western ski resort visitors now sells in 171 countries, and the flavouring at the heart of every can still ships from Bangkok.