Bud Light loses top U.S. beer spot after Mulvaney ad boycott

Bud Light cans are displayed at a baseball game between the Oakland Athletics and the Cincinnati Reds in Oakland, Calif., Friday, April 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Bengaluru — Anheuser-Busch InBev's Bud Light has lost its top spot in the U.S. beer market to Constellation Brands' Modelo Especial, following backlash from conservatives over a social media promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

Sales of Bud Light and Budweiser dropped 24.6 per cent and 9.2 per cent, respectively, for the four weeks ended June 3 from a year earlier, while Modelo Especial sales rose 10.2 per cent, according to consulting company Bump Williams, which sources data from NielsenIQ.

In May, AB InBev CEO Michel Doukeris said it was too early to have a full view of the impact from the backlash.

"Bud Light's stumble with Dylan Mulvaney will certainly hurt their chances to take market share, but Miller Lite, Coors Light and Modelo will reap most of those rewards," said Jon Reynolds, a certified instructor in the business of craft beer at the University of Vermont.

Constellation's Modelo Especial was the top-selling beer brand in the United States with an 8.4 per cent share of overall beer sales through retail stores for the period ending June 3, Bump Williams data showed.

Bud Light came in second with a 7.3 per cent share.

AB InBev's overall sales growth declined 12 per cent in the four weeks ended May 20, data from NielsenIQ and TD Cowen showed.

TD Cowen analyst Vivien Azer said the decline would "fully capture the boycott," compared with the 3.6 per cent decline in sales growth AB InBev witnessed for the four weeks ended April 22.

Shares of AB InBev had outperformed Molson Coors and Constellation Brands for the first three months of the year, but are now trending lower after the backlash against Bud Light intensified in April.

Even before the backlash, sales volumes of established "light" brands had slid at a faster pace than the U.S. beer sector as a whole over the past six years, according to Euromonitor International, as drinkers drifted to craft beers first and then to hard seltzers.

(Editing by Anil D'Silva)