close Video Bud Light should not get involved in divisive political issues: Anson Frericks
Former Anheuser-Busch executive Anson Frericks discusses the sales of Miller Lite and Coors after the Bud Light controversy on The Bottom Line.
Bud Light continued to see a decline in sales during the month of May as consumers nationwide revolt against the nation’s top-selling beer brand over its controversial partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
This is Bud Light’s fifth straight week of plunging sales since Mulvaney first announced a collaboration with the brand, reigniting concern among distributors over whether the beer maker can successfully heal from the branding nightmare.
Compared to a year ago, retail sales of Bud Light in the U.S. were down by 23.6% in the week ending on May 6, surpassing the 23.3% decline the brand saw in the last week of April, according to data from Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ, cited by the New York Post.
Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light’s parent company, also saw significant declines in year over year sales of its other products, though at a slower rate than in previous weeks. Budweiser sales were down 9.7% compared to 11.4% a week earlier; Michelob Ultra dropped 2.9% versus 4.3%; and Natural Light was down 2.5% compared to a 5.2% decline in sales the week prior, the Post reported.
Bud Light sales in the U.S. are down by 23.6%. (Kevin Liles / Getty Contributor)
The latest numbers come after a report released by Beer Business Daily found that the beer company faced net losses for four weeks in April leading up to April 29. This followed initial reports that showed Bud Light in-store sales dropped 26% in the week of April 22.
Data from Connecticut-based Bump Williams Consulting also showed that total sales for Bud Light fell by 8% for the year so far, costing the company approximately $5 billion in losses.
The sharp drop in sales prompted HSBC to downgrade Anheuser-Busch InBev stock to hold in early May, citing a “crisis” following the brand’s controversial marketing campaign that sparked intense backlash after videos emerged of Mulvaney showing a can of Bud Light featuring the activist’s face in celebration of Mulvaneys “year of girlhood.” The promotion quickly led to calls for boycotts, particularly among conservative commentators.
BUD LIGHT PARENT COMPANY’S STOCK DOWNGRADED BY HSBC AMID BRANDING CRISIS, HUGE SALES DROP
Bud Light continues to face backlash more than a month after its polarizing pact with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney prompted outrage. (Getty)
In the meantime, the company has since attempted to make amends with its customers. Bud Light marketing vice president Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake, who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Buschs mainstream brands, both took a leave of absence after the backlash, particularly after Heinerscheid was caught in an interview blasting the brand as “fratty” with “out of touch humor.” A new country-based ad aired during the NFL Draft on April 27 as part of a new campaign.
The company has also attempted to contextualize the Mulvaney videos, explaining that a “third-party ad agency” was responsible for the collaboration with no intention to sell the can. Anheuser-Busch stated that the marketing firm has since been fired, though it declined to name the company.
ANHEUSER-BUSCH BLAMES THIRD PARTY AD AGENCY FOR DYLAN MULVANEY PARTNERSHIP, CUTS TIES AMID MARKETING SHAKE-UP
A picture of the commemorative Bud Light can featuring TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney. (Dylan Mulvaney/Instagram)
Anheuser-Busch also originally put out a statement to Fox News Digital regarding the can.
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“Anheuser-Busch works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics. From time to time we produce unique commemorative cans for fans and for brand influencers, like Dylan Mulvaney. This commemorative can was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public,” an Anheuser-Busch spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
Yael Halon is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to yael.halon@fox.com.
Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, once said recreating a virtual global gold standard like Bitcoin “would be a criminal act of monetary amnesia.”
AVONDALE, Ariz. — Christopher Bell became the first NASCAR Cup Series driver to win three straight races in the NextGen car, holding off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin by 0.049 seconds to win the second-closest race in Phoenix Raceway history Sunday.
Bell started 11th in the 312-mile race after winning at Atlanta and Circuit of America the previous two weeks. The JGR driver took the lead out of the pits on a caution and stayed out front on two late restarts to become the first driver to win three straight races since Kyle Larson in 2021.
The second restart led to some tense moments between Bell and Hamlin — enough to make their team owner feel a bit queasy.
“I was ready to upchuck,” JGR Racing owner Joe Gibbs said.
Bell became the fourth driver in Cup Series history to win three times in the first four races — and the first since Kevin Harvick in 2018. The last Cup Series driver to win four straight races was Jimmie Johnson in 2007.
“We’ve had four races this year, put ourselves in position in all four and managed to win three, which is a pretty remarkable batting average — something that will be hard to maintain, I believe,” Bell’s crew chief Adam Stevens said.
The Phoenix race was the first since Richmond last year to give teams two sets of option tires. The option red tires have much better grip, but start to fall off after about 35 laps, creating an added strategic element.
A handful of racers went to the red tires early — Joey Logano and Ryan Preece among them — and it paid off with runs to the lead before they fell back.
Bell was among those who had a set of red tires left for the final stretch and used it to his advantage, pulling away from Hamlin on a restart with 17 laps left.
Hamlin pulled alongside Bell over the final two laps after the last restart and the two bumped a couple of times before rounding into the final two turns. Bell barely stayed ahead of Hamlin, crossing the checkered flag with a wobble for his 12th career Cup Series win. He led 105 laps.
“It worked out about as opposite as I could have drawn it up in my head,” Bell said. “But the races that are contested like that, looking back, are the ones that mean the most to you.”
Said Hamlin: “I kind of had position on the 20, but I knew he was going to ship it in there. We just kind of ran out of race track there.”
Katherine Legge, who became the first woman to race on the Cup Series since Danica Patrick at the Daytona 500 seven years ago, didn’t get off to a great start and finished 30th.
Fighting a tight car, Legge got loose coming out of Turn 2 and spun her No. 78 Chevrolet, forcing her to make a pit stop. She dropped to the back of the field and had a hard time making up ground before bumping another car and spinning again on Lap 215, taking out Daniel Suarez with her.
“We made some changes to the car overnight and they were awful,” Legge said. “I was just hanging on to it.”
Logano, who started on the front row in his first race at Phoenix Raceway since capturing his third Cup Series at the track last fall, fell to the back of the field after a mistake on an early restart.
Trying to get a jump on Byron, Logano barely dipped his No. 22 Ford below the yellow line at the start/finish. NASCAR officials reviewed the restart and forced the Team Penske driver to take a pass through on pit road as the entire field passed him on the track.
“No way,” Logano said on his radio. “That’s freakin’ ridiculous.”
Logano twice surged to the lead after switching to the red tires, but started falling back on the primary tires following a restart. He finished 13th.
Preece took an early gamble by going to the red option tires and it paid off with a run from 33rd to third. The RFK Racing driver dropped back as the tires wore off, but went red again following a caution with about 90 laps left and surged into the lead.
Preece went back to the primary tires with 42 laps to go and started dropping back, finishing 15th.
The series heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway next weekend.
Bitcoin fell on Monday as volatility in the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency continues following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to create a strategic bitcoin reserve for the United States.
Bitcoin was trading at $81,712, down over 5% but off earlier lows, at 9:42 a.m. Singapore time, according to Coin Metrics.
The reserve will be funded by coins that have been seized in criminal and civil forfeiture cases and there are no plans for the U.S. government to buy more bitcoin. After the strategic reserve announcement last Thursday, crypto prices declined as investors were disappointed it wasn’t a more aggressive program.
Other cryptocurrency prices also dropped on Monday. Both ether and XRP were down about 7.5% at around 9:43 a.m. Singapore time.
Some investors, however, said the move to establish a reserve was bullish in the long-term.
“I absolutely think the market has this wrong,” Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday. “The market is short-term disappointed” that the government didn’t say it was immediately going to start acquiring 100,000 or 200,000 bitcoin, he added.
Hougan pointed towards comments on X from White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks, who said the U.S. would look for “budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies have no incremental costs on American taxpayers.”
“I think the right question to ask is: did this executive order make it more likely that in the future, bitcoin will be a geopolitically important currency or asset? Will other governments look to follow the U.S.’s lead and build their own strategic reserve? And to me, the answer to that is emphatically yes,” Hougan said.
“The reason that questions matters is that’s the question that determines if bitcoin is $80,000 a coin or $1 million a coin.”
Hougan called the decline in crypto prices a “short-term setback.”
“I think the market will soon find its footing and realize that actually this is incredibly bullish long term for this asset and for crypto as a whole,” he said.
