The Super Bowl of beer ads: A lens into America’s beverage market
An American tradition | For decades, tens of millions of Americans have tuned into the National Football League’s (NFL) annual Super Bowl to see the best of the best fight it out on the field. Many of them watched simply to see the commercials, especially those by Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB-InBev) which has held exclusive beer advertising rights to the game since 1989. Over the years, AB has spent many millions of dollars to lock in the hearts and souls of the viewers with iconic, award-winning cinematic-quality ads – memorable, heart-rendering stories of American life, tear-inducing tales of the Budweiser Clydesdales, as well as funny animations with football-playing Bud Lite bottles, talking frogs, and Bud-worshipping crabs. Many of these ads had very little to do with beer, but watching them became a very American tradition. But this tradition ended in 2023 with Super Bowl LVII.