Bud Light found itself dethroned by Corona as Super Bowl champion in the battle of the beers as the embattled brand struggles to recover from the Dylan Mulvaney backlash.
Sales in bars and restaurants crashed to just half of last year’s figure despite running a half-time ad and months of concerted effort to steer away from the trans-friendly image that cost it nearly $30 billion.
Parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev had some consolation as its Michelob Ultra brand notched up most sales during the game itself – helped by an intermission ad featuring soccer star Lionel Messi.
But Bud Light has lost its place as America’s best selling beer with sales still lagging behind Mexican upstart Modelo Especial.
‘We’re listening, we’re learning and we’re continuing to move forward, which is how we’re thinking about it,’ said Anheuser’s new chief commercial officer Kyle Norrington.
The company faced a boycott and an unprecedented backlash after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney announced a tie-up in April
The company tried to repair the damage with an intermission ad featuring rapper Post Malone, Peyton Manning and a ‘Bud Light Genie’ but still fell behind rival Corona
Parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev lost almost $30 billion in share value in the wake of the backlash but has largely recovered due to the success of its other brands
Sales plummeted in April after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney told her followers she had a tie up with the company which had sent her customized cans with her face on the tin.
Anheuser was forced to tell wholesalers that it would buy back unsold stocks as the retail price fell below that of bottled water in some outlets.
Musician Kid Rock, NFL player Trae Waynes and model Bri Teresi were among the high-profile faces expressing their disapproval, filming themselves shooting cans of the beer.
But it also came under fire from Mulvaney and her supporters, who hit out at the brand for failing to get in touch with her during the backlash.
‘I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did. I’ve been scared to leave my house,’ Mulvaney told her Instagram followers.
‘For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse than not hiring a trans person at all.’
Sales of the once-leading brand are still down almost 30 per cent despite a series of ads featuring cowboys and Clydesdale horses, and a tie-up with Super Bowl 2024 as the event’s official beer.
The brand ran an intermission ad featuring rapper Post Malone, Peyton Manning and a ‘Bud Light Genie’ granting wished in a noisy bar.
But the parent company’s share price has recovered to near its pre-Mulvaney level helped by the success of its other brands, and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump rode to its rescue earlier this month when he insisted it was not a ‘woke’ company.
The former president said the partnership with Mulvaney was a ‘mistake of epic proportions’ for which a ‘very big price was paid’, but he insisted it deserved a second chance.
Anheuser-Busch spends $700 Million a year with our GREAT Farmers, employ 65 thousand Americans, of which 1,500 are Veterans, and is a Founding Corporate Partner of Folds of Honor, which provides Scholarships for families of fallen Servicemen & Women,’ he wrote on social media platform Truth Social.
‘They’ve raised over $30,000,000 and given 44,000 Scholarships. Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance?’
‘What do you think? Perhaps, instead, we should be going after those companies that are looking to DESTROY AMERICA!’ the former president stated.
Corona, owned by Constellation Brands, suffered a disaster of its own in 2019 when it briefly halted production amid plummeting sales caused by its bad luck in sharing a name with the pandemic virus.
In October, Anheuser announced a multiyear partnership that will make Bud Light the official beer of the UFC mixed martial arts organization. Bud Light was one of the UFC’s original sponsors 15 years ago.
Super Bowl sales in bars and restaurants were up six per cent on last year for beers overall, but Americans drank 2 billion fewer beers last year than in 2022, the lowest since 1999.
As well as the Bud Light boycott, two other reasons are behind the slump. Younger Americans drink less, while those that do prefer so-called ‘hard seltzers’.
A survey last year by data firm MRI-Simmons found Generation Z had the lowest alcohol consumption of any adult age group in the US.
Some 58 percent of legal drinking-age respondents said they had drunk alcohol in the past six months.
Sales of non-alcoholic beer shot up by 32 percent to October last year, according to NielsenIQ.
National Beer Wholesalers Association president Craig Purser said in a speech to wholesales in October: ‘This is an industry-wide, five-alarm fire.’