Red Bull will be able to call upon their expertise in other sports and as a well marketed brand at Newcastle, but it was a surprise to many when they were first linked with the ailing club.<\/p>\n
One of those was Rob Wilson, a professor in Applied Sport Finance at UCFB, who thinks the Austrian company is dipping its toe into a market that is undervalued.<\/p>\n
“If I was sat in a private equity house, I would be thinking that rugby was undervalued and I am pretty sure that there would be big, significant gains to be made,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Red Bull have bowled in at Newcastle and said ‘we’ll have a go’. If the early signs are positive, you’ll see other companies try and get involved elsewhere. If not, they may hold off.<\/p>\n
“But Red Bull have first-move advantage so if they win, they stand to win big.<\/p>\n
“If they can’t win, we’ll see a reticence of people to move into the market because they’ll think it’s too immature for them to move into.” <\/p>\n
With the league wanting to expand back up from 10 to 12 teams, Newcastle’s place looks secure and gives time for on-field improvements and marquee signings to be made ahead of the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n
But all the while, others will be closely watching how Red Bull get on and whether they can crack the 15-player game. <\/p>\n
“We’ve had the best part of a decade of financial challenges, whether that’s Saracens overspending and breaking regulations, Wasps, Worcester and London Irish going into administration, it needs that reset,” Wilson added. <\/p>\n
“Red Bull feels like the acid test. If it works, then we’re in a new era for rugby union, 30 years on from when it turned professional originally.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull will be able to call upon their expertise in other sports and as a well marketed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-177192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}