Good Morning. It's Tuesday 6th October, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road...
Leeds United have opened their second season back in the Premier League the way survival sides rarely do: unbeaten, fifth, and drifting out of the relegation market. After five games Daniel Farke’s side have nine points from two wins and three draws, seven goals scored and only three conceded. They sit level on points with Liverpool and Everton, a place behind Brentford and ahead of a trip to defending champions Arsenal on Saturday. The market has noticed. On the board in the screenshot, Leeds are 16/1 to go down, the same price as Aston Villa, Everton and Newcastle, and a long way from the short prices attached to the three promoted clubs.
Calvert-Lewin already has three league goals. James Trafford, signed in the summer, has two clean sheets. The defensive additions of Tarik Muharemović and Nico Elvedi have stiffened a side that last season switched to a back five and finished 14th, eight points clear of the drop, after a slow start. Farke has said the first job is still survival. The table says the floor is higher than that. Pre-season, Leeds were commonly priced around 11/2 to 6/1 to be relegated, in the same bracket as Fulham and Crystal Palace. They have lengthened to 16/1 as the results have stacked up. That implies roughly a 6 per cent chance of going down.
Squawka’s model is even more optimistic, putting the relegation risk at about 4 per cent, with a 19 per cent chance of a top-five finish. The other end of the same market explains the contrast. Coventry are 4/9, Hull 8/11 and Ipswich 11/10, the three clubs who came up this summer still head the relegation betting despite Hull’s decent start. Crystal Palace (5/2) and Fulham (3/1) are the shortest established sides. Sunderland, seventh and in Europe last season, are 4/1. Forest are 7/1, Tottenham 9/1. Manchester City’s 13/8 is the outlier and is not a form price.
It reflects the ongoing regulatory case and the market’s reaction to the club’s dispute with the Premier League, not the fact City are top with five wins from five. Arsenal remain 1500/1, Liverpool 250/1, Chelsea 150/1.Top-half and European prices have moved the other way. Leeds were cut from 33/1 to 12/1 for a top-four finish and from 9/1 to 4/1 for a top-six place after the unbeaten run. That is still a long shot, the first Champions League place since third in 1999–2000, but it is no longer a novelty price. Five games is a sample, not a season. Last year the same group had to find a tactical fix before the points arrived.
Calvert-Lewin’s fitness remains the obvious single-player risk: three goals is a strong start, but he has only once in the previous five seasons cleared 30 league appearances. The next fixture is Arsenal at the Emirates, then Manchester United at Elland Road and Sunderland away. A couple of losses would not put Leeds in trouble; they would simply remind everyone that ninth or tenth is still a good season. For now the bookmakers have moved them out of the conversation that still surrounds Coventry, Hull, Ipswich, Palace and Fulham. Nine points, one defeat in seven competitive games, and 16/1 to go down is the early return on a second year in the Premier League.
How Red Bull’s 10% stake is selling Leeds to the rest of the world
Red Bull’s minority stake is doing more for Leeds United than the cash on the shirt, according to football finance specialist Rob Wilson. The energy-drinks company holds about 10 per cent of the club and has been the front-of-shirt partner since 2024–25. Internally, Red Bull’s corporate projects and investments chief Oliver Mintzlaff is treated as a useful sounding board for the 49ers Enterprises board when advice is needed. The sponsorship itself stepped up on promotion: the 2024 agreement already contained a higher Premier League number, and that uplift is understood to have been significant once Leeds returned to the top flight.
Wilson, a professor at the University Campus of Football Business, argues the value is not confined to the fee. “Red Bull really boosts visibility and income for Leeds United and it goes way beyond the fact that they are a shirt sponsor,” he said. “They’re bringing together two things: money and global visibility.“ And when you fuse those two things together, particularly for a brand like Leeds United, and then couple that with the global appeal of the Premier League, you’ve really started to put the ingredients together to supercharge commercial revenues and those sponsorship opportunities.”
The deal, announced on 30 May 2024, was Red Bull’s first non-controlling stake in a football club and its entry into English football. It covered men’s and women’s front-of-shirt branding, exclusive energy-drink rights, and an equity investment whose terms were not disclosed. Chairman Paraag Marathe called it a historic milestone. Mintzlaff said Leeds’ ambition to return to the Premier League and establish itself there fitted Red Bull. That return took another year. Leeds lost the 2024 Championship play-off final, so the first season of the shirt deal was played in the second tier, at a lower fee.
Promotion in 2025 triggered the step-up. By the time the 49ers were pitching further investment in 2025, the Red Bull arrangement was being presented as an EFL-record front-of-shirt deal and more than double what Leeds had earned from the same category in their previous Premier League spell. In a revenue model that now rewards spending as a share of income, a durable shirt partner of that size is as useful on the compliance side as it is on the balance sheet. Wilson’s point is the second-order effect. Red Bull’s distribution, media and event machine puts the Leeds crest in markets the club could not reach on its own.
That makes the next sleeve, training-wear or regional partner easier to sell, because the audience is already larger. The 49ers have also pointed to the wider network, Leipzig, Salzburg, Bragantino, New York and, more recently, stakes in Paris FC and Omiya Ardija, as a recruitment and knowledge resource, even though Leeds is a minority holding rather than a Red Bull club in the Leipzig sense. Jürgen Klopp now oversees that network as Red Bull’s global head of soccer; buying further clubs remains Mintzlaff’s decision, and he has said the group has enough teams for now.
Scepticism was immediate, and predictable. Red Bull’s model elsewhere has meant renamed clubs, redesigned crests and stadiums that carry the brand: the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig, the Red Bull Arena in New Jersey, the training bases and the colourways. Leeds supporters had watched that pattern and did not want it at Elland Road. The 49ers have been consistent in public. Marathe said in May 2024 that renaming the club was not under discussion, that the home kit would stay white, and that Elland Road’s name was “not on my radar whatsoever” and had never been part of the Red Bull talks.
He repeated in February 2025 that there had been no discussion, and no intimation, of a full Red Bull takeover. Stadium expansion is being funded as a project that is meant to pay for itself, not by selling the name. Early works on the West Stand began in May 2026 after planning permission, with capacity planned to rise in phases from about 37,000 towards the high 40,000s and, later, beyond. There is now a statutory backstop. The Football Governance Act 2025 created the Independent Football Regulator, whose objectives include safeguarding heritage.
Clubs need approval to change name, crest or home-shirt colours, and the regulator can block a change that cuts against fan wishes. Disposing of the home ground, or relocating, is also in scope. A future owner who wanted to turn Elland Road into a branded arena would have to get past both the supporter test and the regulator, not just a board vote. None of that makes the partnership costless. A 10 per cent shareholder with a global brand on the shirt has influence even without control, and Mintzlaff’s role as an informal adviser is influence of a quieter kind.
Red Bull’s other clubs are still the reference point for anyone worried about the mission ahead. The commercial case Wilson sets out, cash plus reach, multiplied by the Premier League, is the ownership group’s answer: more revenue, a better platform for the next sponsor, and no change to the name, the badge or the ground. On the pitch, the second Premier League season has started with Leeds unbeaten and fifth after five games. That does not depend on the shirt sponsor. It does make the asset Red Bull bought into in 2024 look more valuable than it did on the night of the Southampton play-off final, and it gives the visibility argument a cleaner stage than the Championship ever could.