Beer maker Coors Light is moving ahead with sponsoring an upcoming pride event despite the possibility of a potential consumer backlash, insisting that the company will support it for “decades to come.”
Beer brand Bud Light faced the ire of consumers after using transgender social influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a promotion campaign. The move triggered boycott calls, with the company’s sales and market capitalization subsequently crashing. Disregarding market sentiments, Coors Light has decided to be the title sponsor of the Denver Pride Parade. Scheduled to be held this Sunday, the event is expected to attract 15,000 people for the march.
Adam Collins, chief communications and corporate affairs officer for Molson Coors, the parent company of Coors Light, told Fox News that the company is committed to backing the event.
“At the end of a long day or the start of a great night, everyone deserves to feel comfortable having a drink and being themselves … That’s why beer, wine, and spirits companies like ours have supported Pride for decades, why we‘ll do so in 2023, and why we’ll continue to do so for decades to come,” he said.
Coors Light has sponsored the Denver Pride Parade for almost two decades, according to a June 20, 2021, post on the Denver Pride website. The event is organized by the Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Colorado.
Backing LGBT Causes
In addition to the Denver Pride Parade, Molson Coors has a long history of supporting other LGBT causes. It has worked with LGBT+ organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, LGBT Victory Institute, and the National Amateur Gay Athletics Association of America.As part of its tenth anniversary in October 2021, Molson Coors committed to donating a part of its sales proceeds from select accounts in 13 cities to LGBT causes.
In 2020, Molson Coors’s Vizzy hard seltzer beverage brand entered into a three-year, $1 million partnership with the Human Rights Campaign to support the organization’s “mission to advance social change and end discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community.” Human Rights Campaign is the largest LGBT+ civil rights organization in the United States.
Molson Coors also scored a perfect 100/100 in the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index that measures internal LGBT+ policies and external practices of businesses.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Molson Coors for comment.
In addition to Coors Light, none of the other major sponsors of the Denver Pride Parade, such as Absolut Vodka, Wells Fargo, Visa, U.S. Bank, Target, and Nissan, have expressed concerns, Fuller said in a June 22 interview with Axios.
Investment firm BlackRock has a 4.88 percent stake in Molson Coors and is the third-largest investor in the company. The Vanguard Group owns a 10.63 percent stake and is the second-biggest investor.
Bud Light in Trouble
Coors Light’s decision to stick with promoting the Denver pride event comes as former number-one beer brand Bud Light is staring at a continuous backlash from consumers for pushing a transgender agenda.
For the four-week period ended June 3, Modelo Especial, owned by Constellation Brands in the United States, took the number-one spot, holding 8.4 percent of retail sales, according to Bump Williams Consulting and Nielsen IQ data. Bud Light came in second, with 7.3 percent of the sales.
In the four weeks ended May 20, the overall sales growth of Anheuser-Busch, which owns Bud Light, declined 12 percent, according to data from NielsenIQ and TD Cowen.
Between April 3 and June 22, Anheuser-Busch’s market capitalization declined from $134.14 billion to $116.65 billion, a loss of over $17 billion.
Bud Light recently released a new promotional ad that got mixed reviews online, with some saying that the company was trying “too hard” while others vowing to only buy rival beverage brands.
Meanwhile, Pride events are triggering tensions in some places. In Franklin, Tennessee, for example, many members of the community were against approving a gay pride festival this year.
Last year, Franklin’s Pride festival had triggered backlash after drag queens sporting names like the “The Blair B***h” engaged in actions in front of kids that people said were obscene and explicit.
In a June 2022 city board meeting, resident JoEllen Thatcher said that events like the Pride festival “are a smokescreen for indecency that we would not tolerate in other situations, exposing our children to potential grooming, not addressing the likelihood of abuse leading to suicide, and opening the door to expanding such abuse.”
For this year’s event, votes were split on whether to allow it. The city mayor ended up casting the tie-breaking vote to allow the Pride festival to be held at a public park.
