TheQuartering [7/5/2023]
Ahead of the Fourth of July weekend Bud Light sales remained much lower than in the same period last year.
Sales of Bud Light dropped 27.9 percent on last year in the week ending June 24, which is slightly better than its worst decline on record – 28.5 percent the week before, according to Nielsen IQ data provided by Bump Williams Consulting to The New York Post.
But unit sales were still deteriorating – down 31.3 percent for the week ending June 24, worse than the 31.1 percent decline in the week before.
Bud Light’s suffering sales were onset when the brand partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The partnership upset conservative drinkers who were quick to boycott the brand but also enraged liberals who said the company failed to respond in solidarity with Mulvaney.
The recent drop in Bud Light sales coincides with an increase in Modelo sales, indicating that America’s appetite for beer remains strong, but its preferences are shifting.
‘The Fourth of July is the biggest beer holiday in terms of retail sales and an opportunity to move a lot of volume,’ Dave Williams, vice president for analytics and insights at Bump Williams Consulting, told the Post.
‘And there has been no notable signs where the course has changed for Bud Light.’
Modelo Especial’s distribution is controlled by Bud Light parent Anheuser-Busch but its US operations are owned by Constellation Brands, which reported an 11 percent increase in sales for the second quarter of this year.
In mid-June Modelo became the best-selling beer in the US, a position previously held by Bud Light for more than two decades.
Modelo represented 8.4 percent of US retail-store beer sales in the four weeks that ended on June 3, compared with 7.3 percent for Bud Light, according to Nielsen data.
Last week, the period between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July was described by The Wall Street Journal as being ‘the beer industry’s Black Friday’ – a period during which sales are expected to skyrocket.
But Bud Light’s sales have tanked since April, when transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney shared a video to Instagram of a customized Bud Light can that the brand had sent her as a gift.
Sales of the beer have continued to decline as the company continued to alienate an increasingly large portion of the market.