When Canadian hockey fans tune in to the NHL all-star game celebrations this weekend, they’ll be treated to the usual sights: celebrities strolling a red carpet, skills competitions, whiplash three-on-three games and a tsunami of corporate promotions. But there will be one notable difference: Bud Light, brewed by Anheuser-Busch InBev, the corporate parent of Labatt Breweries of Canada, will be one of the event’s chief sponsors for the first time since 2011.
It’s also stunning, considering the back story. In the winter of 2011, Molson stole the exclusive rights out from under Labatt, which had had them since 2002. Labatt took Molson and the NHL to the Ontario Superior Court, arguing it had already come to a binding agreement with the league for an extension of its rights.
McCann characterized the arrangements as “semi-exclusive,” with two brewers granted rights in each country: AB-InBev in the United States and Canada; the Boston Beer Company in the U.S., where it is leveraging the NHL to market its Truly Hard Seltzer beverage; and Molson in Canada. “The message being sent back to the league – and this isn’t just the NHL, this is professional sport, or just about anything you can point to that the brewers have used as a promotional platform – they are pushing back now, saying, ‘I don’t need exclusivity, I will leverage my brand and I will develop innovative [promotions] using social media. There are other ways to engage with and connect with my consumer, so I’m not going to pay that top dollar that I once did.
That means “identifying the conversations that are happening in culture already,” said Todd Allen, the vice-president of marketing for Labatt.