Menu
Download the app

SBJ subscribers – Enhance your experience with the revamped iOS app

Marketing and Sponsorship

Red Bull’s Mater exits sports

Chris Mater, longtime Red Bull USA head of sports marketing, has taken a new role with the company as general manager of its Northern California business unit.

Mater 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.

“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,” said Mater, a former SportsBusiness Journal/Daily Forty Under 40 winner. “Fortunately for me, they did a restructure and created these regional general manager roles that allowed me to go from having less responsibility but overseeing a broader area to having much more responsibility in a smaller area.”

Mater, who is Australian, joined Red Bull in 1999 and was part of the company’s launch in Australia. He relocated to the U.S. in 2004 and took over as head of sports marketing in North America in 2007. 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 Mick Fanning and Carissa Moore, and the brand also moved into mainstream sports with NBA players Blake Griffin and 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 back-country halfpipe to train at before the 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, Calif. It regularly earned more than a 1.8 rating, with its best rating being a 4.2 on ESPN in 2007.

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2013/11/11/Marketing-and-Sponsorship/Red-Bull-Mater.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2013/11/11/Marketing-and-Sponsorship/Red-Bull-Mater.aspx

CLOSE