Longtime Red Bull USA Head of Sports Marketing CHRIS MATER has taken a new role with the company as GM of its Northern California business unit. He will oversee business, sales, marketing, distribution and legal from central California to Oregon. He is working out of Red Bull’s Bay Area offices. SEAN EGGERT has taken Mater’s position as head of sports marketing at Red Bull. Mater said, “I love working in sports marketing but from a personal and a professional perspective, I want to run the business and it was a requirement to learn sales and distribution. Fortunately for me, they did a restructure and created these regional general manager roles that allowed me to go from have less responsibility but overseeing a broader area to have much more responsibility in a smaller area.” Mater, who is Australian, joined Red Bull in '99 and was part of the company’s launch in that country. He relocated to the U.S. in '04 and took over as head of sports marketing in North America in '07. During his six years in that role, Red Bull signed a host of new athletes and launched several new events. On the athlete marketing front, Red Bull signed surfers NICK FANNING and CARISSA MOORE. It also moved into mainstream sports with Clippers F BLAKE GRIFFIN and Celtics G RAJON RONDO. Perhaps its biggest signing was of snowboarder SHAUN WHITE. With White, Mater’s marketing team oversaw a “Project X” effort that involved building the snowboarder a backcountry halfpipe to train at before the '10 Vancouver Games. The company also launched a new, made-for-TV sports event on ESPN called “Red Bull New Year No Limits.” The special featured stunts like freestyle motocross rider ROBBIE MADDISON jumping the length of a football field and TRAVIS PASTRANA trying to land a rally car on a barge off the shore of Long Beach. It regularly earned more than a 1.8 rating and its best rating was a 4.2 rating on ESPN in '07.
