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Red Bull sports gives me wings

“Red Bull gives you wings.”

This succinct little catchphrase gets repeated all too often in television commercials by a company that shows no remorse in almost literally forcing their product down the throats of consumers.

Normally I despise being subject to blatant advertising. I even sometimes go out of my way not to purchase a product if I feel like I’m being tricked into complying with the will of a soulless corporation.

But Red Bull, as much as I try to resist, is a company that I just can’t be upset with.

For a corporation with a billion dollars in worldwide sales, they spend their money in the most fantastic and whimsical of ways. Their contribution to the world of sports is especially inspiring.

Although Red Bull owns many sports teams — including several professional soccer teams and a Formula One racing team — the main reason I like the company is because they just go out and invent their own sports.

The best way to describe the events they create would be “organized insanity.” A huge emphasis should be put on the insanity.

Red Bull organizes and sponsors a wide variety of events, from Red Bull Paperwings — their paper airplane flying competition — to Red Bull Crashed Ice, which is an ice-skating obstacle course race. They even run a competition for homemade human-powered flying machines.

If it’s the little things that make life worth living, then these events make life great. Even if it’s for advertising purposes, it makes me really happy to know that a paper airplane enthusiast has some goal to work towards – namely to become a paper airplane world champion, which is as hilarious as it sounds.

And if anyone doubts the worth of our generation, we have a simple and irrefutable retort.

We have a professional airplane obstacle course racing league – the Red Bull Air Race World Championship as they decided to call it. What have you done with your life?

Professional sports leagues exist for our entertainment — but sometimes these leagues become monotonous. For anyone who gets bored with the standard professional sports leagues, these ridiculous gatherings provide a hilarious cure. Sure, someone already created extreme sports; Red Bull just decided to take that to new heights.

I’m really not trying to sell you energy drinks — in fact, I would not drink Red Bull unless you paid me a substantial amount of money. The drink itself seems like poisonous, off-colour urine to me — I assume it tastes that way too.

But I do love Red Bull’s attitude toward running a business. Every company is going to spend money on advertising its product, but Red Bull chose a less than traditional method that we can all appreciate. Basically, they decided to have some fun with it.

And in them having fun, everyone gets to have some fun — or die in the process.

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