Red Bull’s head of corporate sales, Danny Bahar, caused a stir in the autumn when he spoke about the realities of the firm’s involvement with football. 

His rather explicit words on the subject of tradition re-opened old wounds in Salzburg and set alarm bells ringing in New York:

“We don’t play football just for fun. It’s a marketing policy.

“Tradition doesn’t play a role. There’s no tradition in the U.S. You can start from fresh and you have the franchise model, so teams can move where they want.”

Thankfully, this would never happen over here, for nobody in a position of any real clout would be caught talking about the English game in such a crude manner.

Not even Chairman of the FA Premier League, Chairman of The Football Foundation, FA Board Director and vice-chairman of The FA’s International committee, Sir Dave Richards:

“Fan is just a terminology.

“There’s no difference between Marks and Spencer’s PLC and Manchester United PLC, Arsenal, Newcastle and Liverpool. It’s pure perception.

“We talk about customer service in football right now. We don’t talk about fan service. We talk about how we can deliver better things for the customer. We call them fans, but they buy our brands.”

See also: MLS, Premier League, Red Bull by TBG | Comments Off