The world’s richest 30-and-under has been revealed, with Austrian Red Bull heir Mark Mateschitz on top.
Mateschitz is worth an estimated $51.9 billion after his father Dietrich died in October last year.
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Dietrich Mateschitz co-founded Red Bull in 1984 alongside Thai businessman Chaleo Yoovidhya, whose Krating Daeng energy drink inspired Red Bull and jump-started the modern energy drink market as we know it today, with Red Bull GmbH bringing in $14.5 billion in revenue worldwide in 2021.
On his father’s death in October last year, Mateschitz inherited his 49 per cent stake in Red Bull, and became a billionaire in the process.
Mateschitz is currently the wealthiest European millennial there is, and the fourth richest in the entire world behind founder of ByteDance Zhang Yiming, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Walmart heir Lukas Walton.
Red Bull was an unconventionally built business empire, spending 30% of revenue in the early years on marketing efforts and snapping up unconventional athletes and embracing “guerrilla marketing” over traditional methods such as TV ads, running the company at a loss initially.
Red Bull also kept sport as a close part of its brand, buying up then-Jaguar Racing F1 Team and rebranding it as Red Bull Racing, as well as sponsoring Triple Eight Race Engineering in Australia, a NASCAR team and a second Formula One team, with Minardi F1 rebranding as Scuderio Toro Rosso (now known as Scuderia AlphaTauri in reference to Red Bull’s fashion brand).
Red Bull Racing has since become one of the most successful constructors in the history of the sport despite existing for less than 20 years, snapping up four straight titles with Sebastian Vettel from 2010 to 2013, and the last two titles with Max Verstappen.
Red Bull also took over football clubs across the world, buying up Austrian side SV Austria Salzburg and renaming it Red Bull Salzburg, as well as German fifth division side SSV Markanstadt, which was renamed RB Leipzig and promoted to the Bundesliga in 2016.
RB Leipzig reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League in 2019-20, with Red Bull having spent $965 million in transfer fees on players since taking over the club.
Mark Mateschitz is his father’s only son, and has said that he will focus on his role as a shareholder of the company, stepping back from his previous job as head of Red Bull’s organic division.
