An apparent boycott of the National Basketball Association (NBA) "was Bud Light before Bud Light was," the founder of sports media website OutKick has said.
In an opinion column, first published on the site on Thursday and reposted on Fox News on Saturday, Clay Travis argued that the so-called "woke" changes the sport had made in recent years had turned off conservative fans long before the beer brand sparked controversy this year.
He said that declining viewing figures were evidence of NBA supporter sentiments towards what he described as "political, far-left-wing messaging in its games."
It is unclear beyond Travis's own evidence to what extent there was a sustained fan boycott, as opposed to Bud Light, which has seen a real impact on sales since it sent a commemorative can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to celebrate her first year of transitioning to being a woman.
The beer brand was accused of alienating its traditional customer base with the partnership, while some in the LGBTQ+ community—including Mulvaney—have since slammed the company for not defending the partnership.
The sustained backlash against Bud Light and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, led to consistently lower sales since early April—when the controversy began—compared to the same time last year. The brewery's other brands, such as Budweiser and Busch Light, have also been impacted by the backlash, albeit to a lesser extent.
According to the latest figures, in the week ending June 24, Bud Light's sales revenue was 27.9 percent less than it had been in the same week in 2022, while year-on-year volumes were 31.3 percent lower.
The beer industry stats show the company has seen consistently lower sales compared to how it fared last year. In May, Modelo Especial overtook it as America's top-selling beer.
Travis wrote that the "most consequential consumer boycott of the 21st century didn't come from drinker's rejection of a beer, it came from sports, in particular the NBA, which has destroyed its brand with a large percentage of the American sporting public."
While he said that Bud Light "legitimately, might be finished as a popular beer," the supposed NBA fan boycott had been going on for six years.
Travis recounted first becoming aware of a backlash against the NBA in 2017, when it announced it was pulling out of an All-Star game in Charlotte, North Carolina over a controversial law in the state compelling schools and local governments to only have single-gender bathrooms according that people had to use according to their biological sex.
The sports commentator wrote that he had been hosting a talk radio show and the lines "overflowed with sports fans, people who loved basketball, saying they were going to stop watching the NBA over the political decision."
He went on to say that in 2020, when players showed their support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the death of George Floyd, including refusing to play, "American sports fans responded by turning off the NBA Finals."
Travis cited the 7.45 million average viewers for the finals games reported by various sources, describing it as a 75 percent decline on the 1998 finals peak featuring Michael Jordan. That series attracted an average of 29 million viewers.
However, after the low of 2020, which may have been in part caused by the postponement, viewing figures for the NBA finals have recovered somewhat, with 9.9 million on average tuning in for the 2021 games, and 12.4 million and 11.6 million for the 2022 and 2023 finals respectively. In 2019, an average of 15.1 million watched the games.
This fits a pattern of viewership across the regular season. According to figures by Statista, an average of 1.6 million viewers in 2019 dropped to 1.3 million in 2020, before returning to around the 1.6 million mark for the following two years.
"Instead of turning Bud Light into a verb, companies now speak of avoiding being 'Bud Light'd' [who] would have said they hope they didn't get NBA'd," Travis wrote.
Newsweek approached the NBA via email for comment on Saturday.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Aleks Phillips is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter based in London. His focus is on U.S. politics and the environment. ... Read more
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