Many globally recognised US-based brands such as Bud Light, Budweiser, and Miller Lite, have active sponsorship deals in place with sports properties based largely in their domestic market. Many of these deals are highly lucrative and nine out of a total of 430 alcoholic beverages brands that have active deals are worth over $12 million annually. Overall, alcoholic beverage brands are estimated to invest more than $2.4 billion in sports sponsorship deals in the Americas for 2023, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’s latest report, ‘Americas Alcoholic Beverage Sports Sponsorship Landscape’, reveals that the most lucrative deal in the Americas region is Bud Lights’ deal with the NFL is worth over $290 million annually across two seasons. The second biggest deal that an alcoholic beverage brand currently has in place is Heineken’s deal with Formula One, worth $50 million annually, to serve as a title sponsor for selected races in the Formula One calendar. The sector’s third most lucrative deal in 2023 is Budweiser’s deal with Major League Baseball. The two-year agreement is estimated to be worth $40 million annually by GlobalData.

Tom Subak-Sharpe, Sport Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Alcoholic beverages brands are not shy to invest significant funds to secure highly converted sponsorship rights for some of the biggest sporting properties in the Americas region. Unsurprisingly, these brands from the US have flooded the market and continue to spend often tens of millions of dollars on prestigious sponsorship opportunities in the region.”

All the top five US leagues have secured lucrative agreements with alcoholic beverage brands. In the long-term future, due to the size of the American sports market and the popularity of each of these leagues, the value of prestigious rights opportunities such as official beer sponsorship rights is expected to increase.

Subak-Sharpe concludes: “This is great news for the commercial teams of these sports properties as they look to extract as much value as possible from each sponsorship agreement that they agree.”