Bud Light suffered another dramatic weekly plunge in sales in the wake of the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco — accelerating the end of the brand’s reign as the nation’s top-selling beer faster than anticipated, according to industry sources.
The Anheuser-Busch brand saw sales plummet 26.8% during the week ended July 22 — slightly worse than Bud Light previous week’s decline of 26.1%, according to data from NielsenIQ and Bump Williams Consulting.
The dropoff continued a catastrophic trend since Bud Light partnered with the trans influencer April 1 — which sparked backlash and boycotts in conservative regions of the country.
Meanwhile, sales of the No. 2 beer in the US, Modelo Especial, popped 13.4% over the same period, according to the data.
The brand should end Bud Light’s two decades of dominance in market share before the end of August, according to Bump Williams, who heads the eponymous consultancy.
“It’s going to happen a LOT sooner than anyone had ever thought,” Williams told The Post on Monday. “We have it surpassing Bud Light mid-August.”
Modelo Especial has reached 8.2% market share year to date, compared with Bud Light’s 8.4% — “the closest any brand has come to surpassing Bud Light as the King of Beers,” Williams said.
Modelo has been outselling Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light in stores since May. The Belgian-based brewing giant’s other brands have also been dragged down amid the boycott.
Budweiser sales were down 10.3% through July 22, or marginally worse than the 10% decline the previous week, according to the recent data. Sales of Michelob Ultra dipped 0.9%, compared with a 1.3% decline the previous week, and Busch Light dropped 1.1%, compared with 2.8% the previous week.
Other rival beer brands besides Modelo Especial, which Anheuser-Busch owns outside of the US, are also benefiting from Bud Light’s demise, including Yuengling Lager’s sales which soared 21.3%, Coors Light was up 21.2% and Miller Lite jumped 17.7% through July 22, according to the data.
Anheuser-Busch has told industry insiders that it believes the Bud Light declines are “stabilizing” with sales remaining down in the “25% to 28% range” for weeks now, according to Williams.
