Bud Light sales chart reveals how much brand has suffered since boycott (2024)

Bud Light continues to be suffering a sustained decline in sales two months since the beer brand sparked backlash and calls for a boycott after sending a commemorative can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

In the week ending June 3, Bud Light's sales revenue—the brand's dollar income—was down 24.4 percent compared to the same week a year ago, industry data by Nielsen IQ provided to Newsweek by Bump Williams Consulting shows—a further decline compared to the week prior but a marginal improvement on the 25.7 percent nadir in the week ending May 20.

Since the calls for boycott began at the start of April, both Bud Light's sales revenue and volume—the number of units of beer sold—saw steep declines in the first five weeks, before stabilizing at a relatively sustained level of decline compared to the same period in 2022.

"The declines accelerated coming out of the April 1 week, and have settled in the mid-high -20 percent range ever since," Dave Williams, vice president for analytics and insights at Bump Williams Consulting, told Newsweek. He added they were "fluctuating slightly, but we have yet to observe any notable signs of improvement back to the previous norms."

He also said that while Bud Light remained America's best-selling beer in the year-to-date in both revenue and volume, in the past four weeks it had been dethroned in terms of sales revenue by Mexican rival Modelo Especial.

Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light's parent company, was accused of alienating its traditional customer base with the partnership, while some in the LGBTQ+ community have also slammed the company for not defending its ties with Mulvaney.

Some brand strategists have also criticized the brewery over its response to the backlash, which they characterized as being peppered with "knee-jerk" reactions that only extended the controversy.

While the company's global CEO, Michel Doukeris, said on May 4 that the declining Bud Light sales represented about 1 percent of Anheuser-Busch's global volume, the latest figures suggest the backlash is having a lasting impact on the beer brand's U.S. revenue.

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In the week ending May 27, Bud Light sales revenue declined 23.9 percent compared to the same week a year prior, while sales volume was 27.8 percent lower, Bump Williams Consulting figures show. In the week ending June 3, volumes were down 28.2 percent.

On June 3, one sales supervisor at a Bud Light distributor in Florida suggested to ABC News that the beer brand's decline in sales in the week leading up to Memorial Day (May 29) were as much as 60 percent, at a time when beer sales usually soar.

"This has really, really killed a lot of the guys who are commission-based. That's who it's really hurting," the unnamed salesperson told the news outlet. Doukeris acknowledged the impact the boycott was having on the company's supply chain in his May 4 investor call.

From week to week, it appears the declines in sales revenue and volume reached their worst in the week ending May 20, before improving slightly at the end of the month and then dipping once again.

In the four weeks to May 20, Bud Light sales revenue was 24.3 percent lower than the same time last year. In the four weeks to June 3, that rolling four-week average worsened slightly to 24.6 percent.

Williams previously cautioned that elevated beer sales in the summer of 2022 could make the decline from month to month appear greater.

Yet, in a sign that the worst for Anheuser-Busch may be over, its other beer brands—the sales of which had also been impacted by the backlash against Bud Light, albeit to a lesser extent—have seen improvements recently.

Budweiser saw an 8.5 percent year-on-year revenue decline in the week ending May 27, but in the week ending June 3, this was now a 7.8 percent drop. Similarly, Busch Light had gone from 3 to 0.8 percent and Natural Light, 1.5 to 1 percent.

Sales revenue for Stella Artois, another of the brewery's brands, had maintained a flat 3 percent decline across the two weeks in the U.S. market compared to a year ago.

Williams noted that the "majority" of Anheuser-Busch brand showed an improvement in the declining trends and wondered: "Perhaps this is the turning point?"

Newsweek approached Anheuser-Busch via email for comment on Wednesday.

Beer brands in the Molson Coors stable continued to show a strong performance, with Coors Light seeing a 25.8 percent increase in revenue in the week ending June 3 on the same week in 2022, and Miller Lite a 21.4 percent bump—despite the latter facing its own calls for a boycott over a supposedly "woke" advertising campaign.

This continues a trend of Bud Light's competitors apparently absorbing the demand from boycotters.

The latest sales statistics also show Mexican imports were making gains in the U.S. beer market: Modelo Especial revenues soared 12.2 percent off the back of a 9.3 percent bump in volumes in the week to June 3, while Corona Extra saw a more modest revenue increase of 2.7 percent from volumes that were in fact 2 percent down the same week a year prior.

"Modelo Especial appears to be increasing its sales growth each week as we get deeper into summer," Williams commented. "This is combined with the introduction of Modelo Oro, which indicates incremental sales being added to the Modelo Brand Family."

This aligns with statistics provided to Newsweek by Constellation Brands, the beer's U.S. distributor, which showed it drew $36 million more in sales than Bud Light in the four weeks to May 28. Bill Newlands, the company's CEO, said the jump had happened "quicker than we had anticipated."

Washington Post analysis in April suggested Bud Light sales were dropping in part because of a notable rise in Mexican beer imports, facilitated by an Obama-era anti-trust action that limited Anheuser-Busch's domination of the U.S. market.