Future Schalke sporting executive Christian Heidel says "the new competitor" RB Leipzig will have a major competitive advantage over several other Bundesliga clubs.
"RB have a lot of money, but they don't have to earn it," Heidel told kicker.
Last weekend, RB Leipzig won promotion to Bundesliga. The club was only formed in 2009 when energy drink giant Red Bull took over local fifth-league side SSV Markranstadt. They have since worked their way up the league pyramid and have now arrived at the very top.
Next season, they will play alongside the big Bundesliga clubs like Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Borussia Monchengladbach, Bayer Leverkusen and Schalke, but also smaller teams such as Mainz, Augsburg and newly promoted Freiburg.
Heidel, who will leave Mainz for Schalke after 24 years this weekend, said RB Leipzig don't represent a thread for the smaller clubs but rather are regarded as a competitor with an unfair advantage.
"We'll get a club who would not be there without Red Bull. Red Bull is no sponsor, Red Bull is the club," Heidel said.
However, he added that many people in Germany's east are delighted that they have found their home in Leipzig. "And they have every right to do so," Heidel said.
Still, he believes RB Leipzig are in a different league than other newly promoted clubs.
"RB have a lot of money, and they use it well and sustainable, but they don't have to earn it. Many teams won't be able to balance this competitive advantage," he said. "But that's no criticism, because the statutes we [German football] have given us allow it."
Leipzig have been linked with the likes Basel attacker Breel Embolo, Leverkusen keeper Bernd Leno and even Germany international Mario Gotze in recent weeks. While not all of them will join the newly promoted side, Heidel expects them to attack the top clubs immediately.
"RB have impressively marched through the leagues and deserved it from a sporting point of view. No doubt. It will be exciting to see whom they sign. They will very soon attack at the very top," he said.
The Austrian sponsor's involvement has drawn severe criticism in Germany, where the German Football League still has the 50+1 rule in their statutes. The rule says that 50 percent of the shares in a club's professional football division plus one share cannot be traded and must remain in the possession of the non-commercial, non-profit parent club.
With Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg, who are owned by Bayer and Volkswagen respectively, there have always been exemptions from the rule, and the German Football League (DFL) have also implanted a passage allowing any person or company that has been supporting a club uninterruptedly and substantially for a period of 20 years to become the club's owner.
At Leipzig, Red Bull, whose football network includes an MLS club as well as two Austrian sides, have found another loophole. They don't issue shares and have prevented non-Red Bull employees from becoming members with voting rights.
Instead of naming the team Red Bull they were forced to officially call it RasenBallsport, but the full name is rarely used in Germany.