Molson Coors CEO Gavin Hattersley said on Oct. 3 that Bud Light’s boycott-driven loss of market share in favor of rival brands Coors Light and Miller Lite represents a “permanent shift” in the American beer market.
Sales of Miller Lite and Coors Light have been buoyed by the backlash to Bud Light’s marketing partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Mr. Mulvaney, a man who identifies as a woman, showed off a personalized Bud Light beer can with his likeness on it in a video on social media on April Fools’ Day, sparking conservative backlash and widespread calls for a boycott.
In the six months since Mr. Mulvaney first revealed the personalized beer can, sales of Bud Light have tanked.
In August, Molson Coors reported that in the second quarter of 2023, its two key brands outsold Bud Light by 50 percent as drinkers continued to turn their backs on the Anheuser-Busch-made beer amid the transgender marketing fiasco.
A number of industry analysts have said that there appears to be no end in sight to the Bud Light slump and that it’s “hard not to be negative” about the brand’s outlook. One beer industry expert said recently that the company’s decline seems “quasi-permanent.”
And now, the Molson Coors CEO has added his voice to those who are predicting no bounce-back to Bud Light’s former glory.
“We’re now more than six months into it and we feel very confident based on all the data we’ve seen that this is a permanent shift,” Mr. Hattersley said.
In 2022, Bud Light was bigger than both Coors Light and Miller Lite combined in terms of sales. But by the second quarter of 2023, amid the Mulvaney fiasco, the two brands combined were 50 percent bigger than Bud Light by total industry dollars.
Also, over a one-month period ending in early September, sales of Bud Light fell by about 27 percent year over year, according to Bump Williams Consulting.
Bud Light Might Lose Shelf Space
Some experts have forecast that Bud Light will soon lose coveted retail shelf space amid the slump.Beer industry experts, wholesalers, and a former Anheuser-Busch executive told ABC News on Sept. 29 that places such as 7-Eleven, QuikTrip, and Walmart may decrease Bud Light’s refrigerator space in stores.
“During a busy shopping period on a Friday or Saturday night, if you don’t have the beer available cold on the shelf, consumers pick something else,” former Anheuser-Busch InBev executive Anson Frericks, a frequent critic of his former company, told the outlet. He noted that shelf space is “the single largest determinant of sales in a store“ and predicted that there will be a ”dramatic shift” for Bud Light.
Dave Williams, vice president of analytics and insights at Bump Williams Consulting, said that retailers often watch for sales figures to determine what brands would be given the best shelf space.
“There’s explosive growth on one side and sharp decline on the other,” Mr. Williams said, according to the broadcaster. “This does have that ripple effect where if Bud Light loses space on the shelf, that could make it a longer-term endeavor to claw back to where they were if they’re ever able to do that in the first place.”
The Backlash
At the beginning of April, Mr. Mulvaney, who has more than 10 million followers on TikTok, posted a series of videos promoting Bud Light and showing off the personalized can.“This month, I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood, and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever—a can with my face on it,” Mr. Mulvaney said in a video posted on social media on April Fools’ Day.
Conservatives accused the brand of promoting a transgender agenda and called for a boycott.
Singer Kid Rock used Bud Light cans as target practice to express his anger at the promotional campaign, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would be boycotting Bud Light.
Former President Donald Trump also weighed in on the controversy, saying boycotts can be an effective way to send a message to brands that critics say are pushing a leftist agenda.
“It’s time to beat the Radical Left at their own game,” President Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social in May. “Money does talk—Anheuser-Busch now understands that.”
Since the boycott calls began in April, Anheuser-Busch InBev has lost billions of dollars in revenue.
Amid the fallout, the market value of Anheuser-Busch InBev has sunk to about $107.03 billion as of Oct. 4, from about $132.4 billion on April 1, the day Mr. Mulvaney showed off the personalized can on social media.
In another sign that the boycott is having an effect, Bud Light has been replaced as the top-selling brand in the United States by competitor Modelo.
