In any professional sport, what could be more necessary than a rule preventing one person or organisation from owning two teams? The potential conflicts of interest are obvious. One team could be used to help the other by, for instance, rolling over when they met at a crucial point in the battle for a championship, or by obstructing a third party in order to favour a stablemate.
Formula One used to have a rule like that, but it was a distant memory by the time Dietrich Mateschitz came along. The man who bought the recipe for a caffeine-based drink from a Thai businessman and relaunched it in 1987 as Red Bull was already a multibillionaire by the time he decided to add a second F1 team to the one he had launched in 2005. That first team, built on the shaky foundations of the unsuccessful Jaguar team, was immediately renamed after the drink.
Related: Leipzig before Red Bull: a city that can claim to be the home of German football
Related: Real Madrid reach Champions League final despite defeat by Atlético
Continue reading...