News AB Sues Baseball

AB sues Major League Baseball over sponsorship contract

Anheuser-Busch Inc. sued Major League Baseball today for allegedly breaching a sponsorship contract.

The suit claims that Major League Baseball agreed in April to renew A-B as the official beer of the league. MLB reportedly wanted more money, said the deal was non-binding and that it could use other beer sponsors.

Budweiser sponsors 26 of the 30 MLB clubs and has been MLB’s official beer sponsor for more than 30 years.

Details to follow.

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0 Comments on “AB Sues Baseball”

  • Jephro

    says:

    Wow, are they suing apple pie too? I just don’t know what i’d do if i went to a baseball game and i couldn’t get $0.07 worth of Bud Light for ten bucks. I guess i could always drop a urinal cake in a cup of ice water.

  • einhorn

    says:

    Jephro wrote: Wow, are they suing apple pie too? I just don’t know what i’d do if i went to a baseball game and i couldn’t get $0.07 worth of Bud Light for ten bucks. I guess i could always drop a urinal cake in a cup of ice water.

    Great stuff. Urinal cake – I have the picture in my eyes!

    Oddly enough, this is exactly the reason (IMO) for the downslide of these brands. NO ONE wants to pay these kind of prices for these beers. It’s coming down to VALUE – which explains the current growth trend of craft beers, both in on-premise and off-premise beer sales.

    (Poster slowly descends from soapbox, sipping a pale ale. He waves good night.)

  • Scott M

    says:

    So, how does InBev get away calling itself Anheuser-Busch Inc.? Did they buy the Name too, in an effort to hide the fact that they are a multi-national brewing conglomerate?

    Makes me wonder if sales are dropping off.:rolleyes:

    Filing suit against MLB isn’t a good idea, no matter what your legal footing is. This is a major risk of exposure by InBev!!

  • NinkasiSwain

    says:

    So “Beer” is suing “Baseball”?

    Sounds like an opportunity for maybe some of the larger smaller brewers to get their foot in the door, if nothing else other than Baseball saying “here’s what we think of your powerplay.

    Problem for AB is that “Beer” is no longer the monolith it once was, and people want local names associated with local things more and more, it seems.

    There is now more than one thing called “Beer”. But there really is only one thing called “Baseball”.

  • LuskusDelph

    says:

    Jephro wrote: Wow, are they suing apple pie too? I just don’t know what i’d do if i went to a baseball game and i couldn’t get $0.07 worth of Bud Light for ten bucks. I guess i could always drop a urinal cake in a cup of ice water.

    Ha. I just sprayed a mouthful of morning tea all over my desk upon reading that one.
    And here I always thought that Bud’s secret was “Beechwood Aging”:D

  • jesskidden

    says:

    Scott M wrote: So, how does InBev get away calling itself Anheuser-Busch Inc.? Did they buy the Name too, in an effort to hide the fact that they are a multi-national brewing conglomerate?

    The name of the combined companies is Anheuser-Busch InBev.

    Their US division is called Anheuser-Busch, Inc.

  • LokeBrewSF

    says:

    Maybe AB sueing the MLB is one of their ideas on how to get back some $$ from their current drop in sales. “Hmmm, we can’t force people to drink our rice water more, so let’s just start sueing people.”

    It seems like quite a risk, AB has to make a killing during the season. I remember a stat during the WS that the Texas stadium goes through 45,000 bottles of beer per game. Multiply that by 81 home games and 30 teams and you get a TON of $9 beers. I wonder why they would risk any of that.

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