Opposing Beer Brands Pounce On Struggling Bud Light, Taking Retail And Bar Space From The Once-Dominant Brand

Bud Light just can’t seem to catch a break as retailers are already making plans to host other beer brands in the spaces that belonged to the once number-one beer brand in America. 

Anheuser-Busch has been reeling since their catastrophic partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney after the company sent him a custom can to celebrate his ‘365 Days of Womanhood.’ The move resulted in a record boycott against the American beer company, causing millions of dollars in lost sales and massive brand damage, per DC Enquirer.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that since the beer company is continuing to see disappointing sales results, retailers have begun to shift to other brands, with “the biggest beneficiary of Bud Light’s woes” being rival beer company Molson Coors Beverage. 

Molson Coors reported a massive gain with the losses of Bud Light with their Chief Executive Gavin Hattersley saying on a conference call that they’ve been gaining retail shelf spaces since the spring with more expected to come in the fall. On top of that, within bars and other like businesses, the company has managed to net an impressive 12,000 tap handles during that last quarter.

In comparison, Anheuser-Busch has new figures showing that the company was down $390 million during the second quarter of 2023, averaging a 10.5 percent drop in sales across all of the brands in their umbrella, per the DC Enquirer. Bud Light specifically could see upwards of 30 percent or more per week in dropped sales compared to the same time the year previous.

That massive gain is almost entirely accredited to Anheuser-Busch falling off a cliff in popularity. To top it all off, Molson Coors isn’t looking to give them a chance to recover, planning to invest a massive $100 million into marketing during the second half of the year to continue with the immense momentum they’ve been seeing. 

Molson Coors Beverage isn’t the only company that has been gaining with the failures of Bud Light with competitor Modelo Especial dethroning the once-dominant brand to take first place, per the DC Enquirer. The brand saw a fifteen percent increase in its sales while in comparison Bud Light saw a gut-wrenching 22.8 percent drop in sales during the same period.

The world of business is a harsh one. The second a company like Anheuser-Busch shows weakness is whenever every other brand will pounce and take advantage of their weakness. Mistakes like a partnership with an influencer that stands against what much of your consumer base believes cannot be made and go unpunished.