Red Bull’s Max Verstappen celebrates after winning the Brazilian Grand Prix on Nov. 5, 2023.
Amanda Perobelli | Reuters
Red Bull Racing’s dominance in Formula 1 this yr is translating on to higher sales of its namesake energy drink, the team’s principal and CEO, Christian Horner, told CNBC.
“There’s an old adage of, ‘Win on Sunday and sell on Monday.’ Well, what we do for the Red Bull brand, for the energy drink in promoting the product globally for 23 race weekends a yr, we’re the most important marketing impact that the beverage company has,” Horner told CNBC’s Sara Eisen within the documentary “The Inside Track: The Business of Formula 1.”
The Red Bull team, which also counts tech giant Oracle as a title sponsor, has trounced the grid this season, winning 19 of the 20 Grand Prix weekends to this point. Its world champion driver, Max Verstappen, has taken the checkered flag on 17 of those wins, along with his teammate Sergio Perez collecting wins in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan.
Verstappen already clinched the 2023 drivers title — his third world championship — in early October in the course of the seventeenth Grand Prix weekend of the season, in Qatar. The Red Bull team secured the constructors championship the weekend prior, in Japan.
The drivers will take to the track again on Sunday in Las Vegas before the season wraps at the tip of this month in Abu Dhabi.
Red Bull declined to share specific sales metrics, but an organization spokesperson reiterated the F1 “uplift” and said it’s particularly noticeable in corresponding race markets.
“They see it, they will measure it. It’s incredible the quantity of consumption of Red Bull that is occurring,” Horner told CNBC.
Red Bull is the second-most popular energy drink brand on this planet, with 13% market share, in response to Euromonitor International data. It trails only Monster Beverage‘s namesake brand, which holds 16.4% of the worldwide market share.
But the marketplace for energy drinks has grown more crowded, putting pressure on Red Bull. The corporate’s market share has slipped from 13.5% in 2021 to 13% this yr as newer players, corresponding to PepsiCo, enter the category.
Lately, beverage giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi have each set their sights on the fast-growing energy drink category — with various degrees of success. Soda consumption has decreased over the past twenty years, but sugary energy drinks have bucked the trend due to their caffeine content and related effects.
Coke launched its own energy drink in the UK in 2019. But Coke Energy failed to realize a foothold with U.S. consumers; the corporate discontinued the drink in North America in 2021, roughly a yr after it launched.
Coke rival Pepsi has found more success through deal-making. It bought Rockstar Energy for $3.85 billion in 2020, gaining ownership of each the corporate’s namesake energy drink and fast-growing Sting Energy.
Last yr, Pepsi took a $550 million stake in Celsius, which markets itself as a healthier energy drink that enhances workouts. Those deals are on top of efforts corresponding to shifting Mountain Dew into the energy drink category and adding caffeine to Gatorade.
Find replay times of “The Inside Track: The Business of Formula 1” on CNBC.
