Embattled Anheuser-Busch Forced To Sell Smaller Brands
Anheuser-Busch’s plunge into oblivion continued this week with a Monday announcement that it will sell eight craft beers. The company is in a free fall since its ill-advised partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney earlier this year created a whirlwind of controversy.
The company’s portfolio of craft beer, which included Shock Top and other brands, will significantly shrink. The $85 million deal with Canadian cannabis company Tilray is expected to close next month.
Anheuser-Busch is also losing the brands’ employees, breweries and affiliated brewpubs.
With tens of billions in lost revenue and hundreds of workers laid off, 2023 has been a disastrous year for the former top-selling beer brand in the U.S. Both Bud Light and Budweiser watched their sales plummet.
Modelo Especial is now the number one beer in the U.S. as conservatives across the nation run from the once iconic Budweiser and Bud Light. That flip-flop happened in June as Bud Light lost 24.6% from a year earlier while Modelo rose 10.2%.
That lost status just became worse with the selloff of several brands to a marijuana company.
Even a recent attempt to lure country music fans back to the Anheuser-Busch drew strong condemnation. Bud Light collaborated with the country band Midland through a Sunday announcement on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The beleaguered beer brand advertised a contest for Midland fans to win tickets to see them perform in Oklahoma City on Aug. 15. The posting encouraged fans to “dust off the boots, because Midland is coming to Oklahoma City! Sign up for a chance to win tickets.”
The response was overwhelmingly negative, much as everything related to the beer since April 1 has been. That was the day Mulvaney shared an Instagram post showing his face on a Bud Light can celebrating “365 days of girlhood.”
One X user asked what band would voluntarily agree to partner with a “toxic brand.”
Another announced they had canceled their tickets to the show. With Bud Light as a sponsor, the user declared, “I am OUT!!! Refund time!”
Still another posted a video clip of two Bud Light bottles with the description, “a few stragglers in the basement fridge.” Then the bottles were smashed by a brick.
Even the lure of free beer, which Bud Light has attempted through massive rebates, has not brought drinkers back to the brand. A sincere apology would be a start, but that’s not likely in today’s corporate world.
