Kid Rock got pretty worked up earlier this year after transgender TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney shared a video on April 1 of herself participating in Bud Light’s Easy Carry Contest for the end of the NCAA’s March Madness. So worked up, in fact, that the rapper-turned-MAGA-country-rocker uploaded a video in which he attempted to obliterate 12-packs of Bud Light with a semi-automatic rifle as he yelled “f–k Bud Light, and f–k Anheuser-Busch.”
And though Rock didn’t specifically mention Mulvaney (or the word trans) in the video, or call for a ban of products from Bud Light parent company AB Inbev — the world’s leading beer company — a CNN report this week noted that the bar at Rock’s Nashville restaurant is still well-stocked with a number of the company’s products.
CNN reporter Ryan Young said it was unclear during a recent visit to Rock’s Honky Tonk Rock & Roll Steakhouse if the ban had been lifted, or if one had ever been put in place. While country singer John Rich pledged at the time to pull Bud Light from his Nashville bar Redneck Riviera and Travis Tritt said he would remove the formerly best-selling brew in the nation from his tour rider in the midst of the transphobic backlash against the Mulvaney promotional stunt, Rock never specifically said he’d stop selling it at his spot on the city’s bustling Broadway bar and venue district.
Billboard was unable to reach anyone at Rock’s restaurant by phone or email for comment at press time, but a quick check of its online menu revealed that Budweiser, Bud Light and Bud Light Lime were listed under the domestic beer section; a tweet last month with an image of the menu appeared to corroborate that the brews are still available at the bar, calling into question whether the beverage had ever been taken off the roster.
In the original Mulvaney clip, she revealed that the company helped her celebrate her “365th day of womanhood” with “possibly the best gift ever” — a commemorative can of Bud Light with Mulvaney’s face on the side that was not commercially available, but instead meant as a personalized one-off souvenir.
At the time of the controversy — which was endlessly amplified on conservative outlets such as Fox News — a beer industry expert noted to Billboard that AB Inbev had long participated in outreach to the LGBTQ community, including sponsoring pride celebrations. And while that expert said these types of calls for boycotts against major corporations typically draw huge headlines and lots of bluster for a short time, they hardly ever have any “significant” impact on the bottom line.
On Monday, however, Newsweek reported that recent sales data shows that over a four-week period ending July 1 Bud Light suffered a 28% decrease in revenue sales and a 31.2% decrease in the brand’s volume — the number of units of beer sold — compared to the same period last year.
