Bud Light Sales Continues To Slip, Now Surpassed By Modelo & Michelob UItra As America’s Best-Selling Beer

The Bud Light backslide continues.

Prior to the spring of 2023, the light beer brand was the best selling in all of the land. Bud Light, which is owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, was the undisputed leader in beer sales for years. But then that title went away in matter of months, and it all traces back to the partnership Bud Light did with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

You probably remember it like it was yesterday, when all kinds of celebrities were encouraging others to boycott the brand, and Kid Rock famously shot up a ton of Bud Light cases and cans. For a time, Bud Light was hard to move off the shelves, and the beer that once claimed the number one spot in sales had one of the most unexpected and unnecessary drop offs in the history of consumerism.

And that effect is still being felt today.

According to a NielsenIQ data analysis, Bud Light was surpassed by both Modelo and Michelob Ultra in year-to-date numbers through the beginning of July. 9.3% of beer dollar sales in U.S. stores were accounted to Modelo, while Michelob Ultra accounted for 7.1%. Bud Light was in the third position with 7.0%, which isn’t terrible, but is drastically lower than it’s pre-Bud-Light-boycott positioning.

A silver lining for the Anheuser-Busch InBev corporation is that Michelob Ultra is underneath their umbrella, so at least they didn’t lose the second spot to a direct competitor (though they did lose the top spot to a rival). Additionally, the “Bud Light Boycott” doesn’t seem to be as as strong as it once was, and that’s largely in part to the face-saving that Anheuser-Busch has done since the Dylan Mulvaney partnership.

Though it’s calculated that Bud Light has lost over a billion dollars since the boycott, things are starting to come around for the brand. Bud Light is now the official beer of the UFC, the brand has celebrity endorsements with Post Malone and Shane Gillis, and even former president Donald Trump stated that the beer company “deserves another chance” from consumers.

Those things could help Bud Light get back on track, but for now, they are going to have to settle for third place in United States beer sales. And as the legendary Ricky Bobby once said, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

Their latest ad looks to target one of their longtime, and perhaps most dedicated, group of customers…. football fans: