Bud Light Appears to Respond to Low Sales With NFL Giveaway

Bud Light, made by Anheuser-Busch, sits on a store shelf in Miami, Fla., on July 27, 2023. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Anheuser-Busch InBev brand on Thursday kicked off its long-running sponsorship of the NFL as its Bud Light brand struggles to regain ground in the midst of a monthslong boycott.

Bud Light has apparently responded to the slump in sales with a promotion that will hand out several NFL-related prizes. The biggest prize is 2,000 free NFL Sunday Ticket subscriptions, according to a news release.

Anheuser-Busch said it intends to give out 2,000 subscriptions to NFL Sunday Ticket in a contest that expires in mid-October. That’s about a month after the NFL season starts, however. Additionally, the company will give away NFLShop.com merchandise.

“Bud Light has been the Official Beer Sponsor of the NFL for over 27 years, and every season we look forward to delighting fans by making their gameday celebrations easier over a Bud Light and America’s most popular sport: football,” Todd Allen, the Bud Light’s marketing executive, said in the release. “We know for NFL fans Sunday has become synonymous not only with game day, but also with time-honored traditions.”

An accompanying Bud Light commercial also features “real fans” and “real traditions,” according to the release. Those include a fan who is a military veteran “who never missed a game when she was deployed, no matter the time of night.”

The marketing blitz comes months after Bud Light’s disastrous marketing move to make a personalized can with transgender influencer Dylvan Mulvaney during a March Madness promotional campaign. Some conservative activists and celebrities quickly reacted, calling for a boycott of the brand.

Weeks later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis weighed in on the controversy and called on the state’s pension fund manager to take legal action against Anheuser-Busch for its alleged “failure to remediate the problem and repair its relationship with millions of disaffected American consumers,” which will “financially harm the [State Board of Administration] and other shareholders.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently asked Anheuser-Busch to hand over documents in connection to an investigation as to whether the company’s Mulvaney promotion was targeting children, which would violate Federal Trade Commission rules barring alcohol companies from marketing to individuals under the age of 21.

“The level of cooperation the Committee receives will bear significantly on my assessment of whether this is part of a broader problem across the Anheuser-Busch InBev product line and whether changes to federal law are necessary to prohibit Anheuser-Busch InBev from marketing beer to children,” the Republican senator wrote in a letter to Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Michael Doukeris last week, claiming that AB InBev hasn’t sent over the documents three months after he asked the firm.

Mr. Doukeris, meanwhile, has said that only “one can” with the transgender influencer was made and said there was never any official partnership. He also claimed that social media-driven misinformation was partially responsible for the boycott.

More Sales Data

Sales of the light beer dropped in each consecutive week, and, according to recent data, are showing no signs of abating. Bud Light’s volumes were down 28.1 percent for the week ending Aug. 13, according to data from Circana and Evercore ISI that was released Tuesday. The beer has seen annual declines of more than 28 percent in each of the last four weeks, they noted.

Anheuser-Busch InBev appears to have attempted to cut costs in the midst of the sales declines. The company came to an agreement to sell eight of its beverage and beer brands to Tilray, and weeks before that, it confirmed that several hundred corporate employees would be laid off.

Some analysts, including one with Evercore, have said the company will likely need to cut costs further.

“Continued weakness begs the question of whether Anheuser-Busch InBev and/or its distributors will have to make significant structural changes to reduce their cost basis if trends don’t improve over the next few months,” Evercore ISI analyst Robert Ottenstein wrote, according to Yahoo Finance.

Meanwhile, Modelo Especial is now the top-selling beer in the United States, surpassing Bud Light.

Data from Nielsen IQ shows Modelo Especial’s sales at beer and grocery stores surpassed Bud Light’s for the entire year, according to reports. Modelo got 8.34 percent share of dollars spent on beer, as compared to 8.28 percent for Bud Light from the start of 2023 to Aug. 12.

“The fact that we became the number-one beer in America due to a competitor’s moves is not accurate,” Jim Sabia, executive vice president and managing director of Constellation Brands, said in a recent statement. While the Modelo brand is owned by AB InBev outside the U.S., it’s owned by New York-based Constellation inside the U.S.

Molson Coors, which brews both Miller Lite and Coors Light, also saw significant sales increases in recent months. According to the report, Coors Light’s and Miller Lite’s combined sales were 50 percent higher than Bud Light in the second quarter and 30 percent higher than Modelo Especial.