Snoop Dogg sues brewer Pabst
Life writes the best stories. Snoop Dogg (who he?), a U.S. rapper, is suing Pabst Brewing, saying the firm owes him money from the sale of the company and its beer lines last year, various media reported on 9 June 2015.
In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, the rapper is seeking 10 percent of the net sales paid to Pabst for its malt liquor brand Colt 45.
To back his claim, Snoop Dogg, 44, argued that in 2011 he had signed a three-year deal to endorse Blast, a fruit-flavoured extension of the Colt 45 brand.
At the time, Colt 45 and a host of other brands belonged to Pabst Brewing, which was owned by the twentysomething brothers Daren and Evan Metropoulos. Their father, the buy-out specialist Dean Metropoulos, acquired Pabst in 2010 for allegedly USD 250 million and then passed the business on to his sons.
Under his contract, Snoop Dogg claims he was to receive a portion of the sale of the brand if Pabst sold it before January 2016.
The sale of Pabst to Oasis Beverages, a Russian brewer and distributor, headed by Eugene Kashper and backed by investment firm TSG Consumer Partners, was finalised in November 2014, but no purchase price was announced.
The rapper’s lawyer, Alex Weingarten, however, states in the lawsuit that the beer company was sold for USD 700 million. The sale price of the brand Blast by Colt 45 was not disclosed.
Snoop Dogg, whose legal name is Calvin Broadus Jr, and whose net worth Forbes estimated to be USD 135 million (2014), had a payment of USD 250,000 for the contract and received another USD 20,000 for every 10th mention he made of the beer on social media, TV or during a concert.
Now readers will understand why rappers are called Hip-Hop Cash Kings. They don’t make their money from their music but from flogging all kinds of stuff – and booze.
The Snoop Dogg-Blast deal is not unique. Many rappers have close alcohol links. Although some rappers own the alcohol brands they represent (e.g. Bryan “Birdman” Williams who owns the GT Vodka brand), a few of them only have partial ownership deals or superior endorsement deals (like Snoop Dogg or P. Diddy), i.e. they share a certain percentage of profits and get a cut from the proceeds if a brand is sold.
However, it seems that despite Snoop Dogg’s best efforts, the Colt 45 brand did not perform all that well as data show that sales dropped between 2011 and 2013.
Pabst, the maker of beers like Old Milwaukee and Schlitz, said in a statement that it had not been contacted by the rapper or his representatives about the claims.
“We are investigating the matter and would be happy to talk to Snoop or his representatives to try to get to the bottom of this,” the Associated Press quoted the statement as saying.
