Bud Light suffered its worst weekly sales drop since the nation’s No. 1 beer brand launched an ill-fated marketing tie-up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
For the week ending June 10, Bud Light sales dropped by a whopping 26.8%, according to the latest data from Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ.
That’s wider than the 24.4% drop seen during the prior week — and topped the all-time previous worst plunge of 25.7% during the week ended May 20 — since the beer giant got into bed with Mulvaney on April 1.
Anheuser-Busch’s other brands also took a step backwards for the week ended June 10, according to the data. Sales of Budweiser were down 10% compared to a 7.8% decline the previous week, while Natural Light was down 2.3% vs. a 1% decline. Michelob Ultra – the nation’s No. 3 beer — was down 2.4%.
“This was a tough week for Bud Light and other beer brands” owned by Anheuser-Busch, said Bump Williams, head of the eponymous consulting firm.
The calls for a boycott from conservative corners of the country over the Mulvaney campaign has cost the Belgian-based beer company more than $20 billion.
The nation’s No. 2 beer, Modelo Especial, meanwhile saw a 5.7% increase versus a year earlier in the most recent week.
In the previous week, it had seen a 12.2% bump from a year earlier.
Still, Bud Light remains the No. 1 beer brand and has a “several hundred million-dollar advantage” over Modelo Especial on a year-to-date basis, Williams said.
Modelo has been outselling its rival on a weekly basis since May, the data shows, but for Bud Light to be unseated it would require the declines to continue and Modelo’s increases to continue through the end of the year.
Williams predicts that it’s “unlikely” Modelo will become Amerca’s No. 1 brand on a 52-week basis.
“In some instances the trends for a particular brand may be healthy in some local areas across the country and worse in others,” Williams explained.
Though what had started out as a backlash against Bud Light and its sister brands in mostly red states has shifted to blue states, beer experts have noted.