Bud Light sales down continued to tank in the wake of the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco — while the tarnished brand’s rivals keep swiping away market share, according to the latest data.
The Anheuser-Busch brand’s sales plunged by 25.9% during the week ended July 29 — extending the downward spiral since Bud Light’s ill-fated tie-up with the trans influencer on April 1, according to data from NielsenIQ and Bump Williams Consulting.
Bud Light has been dethroned as the nation’s top-selling beer for the past three months after Mulvaney’s shout-out led to a nationwide boycott.
Modelo Especial is expected to vault into the No. 1 spot for the entire year by the end of the month, Dave Williams told The Post, reiterating an earlier prediction by his company.
Bud Light controls an 8.4% market share compared with Modelo’s 8.2% share, according to the NielsonIQ data.
The Constellation-owned brand, which posted a 14.8% increase in sales last week, isn’t the only beneficiary of Bud Light’s demise. Rivals Coors Light (20.7%), Miller Lite (19.25) and Yuengling Lager (22.5%) enjoyed double-digit spikes, the most recent data show.
Anheueser-Busch reported that revenue has taken a nearly $400 million hit since the backlash began in its latest quarterly earning released last week.
“The situation hasn’t gotten any worse, nor has it gotten better for Bud Light,” Williams said.
On July 27, Anheuser-Busch laid off 400 employees or about 2% of its workforce as part of a restructuring, the brewery said.
Most of the positions were in marketing in its offices in St. Louis, New York and Los Angeles.
Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth said in a statement: “While we never take these decisions lightly, we want to ensure that our organization continues to be set for future long-term success.”
Many Anheuser-Busch distributors say they don’t expect to win back customers who have left the Bud Light brand in anger, as The Post reported.
“Consumers have made a choice,” an executive at a Texas-based beer distributor who did not want to be identified told The Post. “They have left [Bud Light] and that’s how it’s going to be. I don’t envision a big percentage of them coming back.”
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
