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The boycott against Bud Light has been going for two months now since they endorsed transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s “365 Days of Being a Girl.”
Normally, you might have expected such a thing to wane over time. Yet if anything, it seems to be deepening and getting worse. It’s held fast through Memorial Day weekend with a lot of supply left on the shelves and in the aisles, despite Bud Light even offering it for sale for essentially free. That doesn’t spell good news for Bud Light and its parent Anheuser-Busch, which was using Memorial Day as a marker to see if they can pull back any of the customers they had lost. We haven’t gotten the numbers in yet for the weekend; they will probably come toward the end of the week.
But the numbers that we have now up through the week ending May 20th truly spell big trouble for Bud Light if they had hoped to pull out of the spiral. Sales are now down nearly 30 percent.
The sales volume of Bud Light dropped 29.5% in the week ending May 20 as compared to the same period last year, according to data provided to Newsweek by Bump Williams Consulting and Nielsen IQ. This data showed the sales revenue drop 25.7% in the same period. [….]
The nearly 30% drop marks another increase in losses week to week since the boycott gained traction in April. Bud Light sales dropped 28.4% from last year for the week ending May 13.
Bud Light lost 24% of its sales and Budweiser fell 10.5% in the four weeks ending May 20, according to the data.
Anheuser-Busch has struggled with losses from its other products as well, such as Michelob Ultra, which fell 6.8% for the week ending May 13. Its competitors, such as Coors Light and Miller Lite, have seen sales increases of 16.9% and 15.1% over the same period.
This was despite all the efforts to offer rebates and give beer away for free.
No one is buying Bud Light. pic.twitter.com/au17wdksKu
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) May 30, 2023
They even tried to flip the script by doing a partnership with Harley Davidson and running a “manly commercial.” Not surprisingly, that didn’t do the trick.
How bad is it? Not only have they lost 30 percent, but they’re also endangering their status as the number one brand. This spells good news for their chief competitor Modelo.
The precipitous drop has narrowed the gap in sales between Bud Light and nearest rival Modelo Especial, which saw its sales surge 9.2% for the week ending May 20, according to Bump Williams Consulting and NielsonIQ data.
“While Bud Light loses week after week, Modelo Especial gains week after week and now Modelo outsells Bud Light on a national basis across all trade channels combined,” Bump Williams, who runs the consulting firm, told The Post.
“If this continues Modelo will surpass Bud Light for the year,” he added
Anheuser-Busch InBev owns Modelo outside of the United States, but inside the U.S. it’s owned by Constellation Brands. So the Bud Light/AB people aren’t getting the money if you buy Modelo in the United States.
Yuengling has also done very well in the wake of the controversy.
Yuengling, which bills itself as “America’s Oldest Brewery,” has seen sales of Yuengling Flight soar by a whopping 47.6% and its lager spike by 32% for the four-week period ended May 20, according to the data.
The problem for Bud Light is that there are so many alternatives, it makes for a very easy boycott, and there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight.
