As reported last Feburary, US mega brewer Anheuser-Busch has obtained the exclusive rights to sell the beer at the World Cup in Germany. Reports from across the sea have it that the move to only sell a thin bubbly rice based fluid has not been particularly well received. Unlike German keeper Oliver Kahn after the last World Cup in 2002 and his own beer of choice, right, apparently the Germans do not like the bidding war winner much:
Most pubs don't even stock it," Walter Koenig of the Bavarian Breweries' Association told the paper. "Bavarian beer should be available in a Bavarian stadium - Munich - for the first kickoff. But what can we do? Budweiser paid $40 million for the concession even before Germany had been chosen to host the tournament." Nicholas von Hoffman wrote in The Nation that German youths mounted a Web site (www.budout.org) depicting "Teutonic youths performing extreme anti-Bud acts." Franz Maget, a Bavarian Social Democrat, was quoted as calling Budweiser "the worst beer in the world."Hmm: "[t]hey call it Spülwasser, which roughly translates as dishwater." As a compromise, I read that Bitburger brand is being sold in logoless cups at 30 percent of concessions appeased some Germans. There was no such compromise at the last minute, however, to spare the shorts of a thousand Dutchmen the other day. Hmm:
The storm of protest was particularly strong in Bavaria, where politicians joined the public discussion. One stated: "We have a duty of care, a caretaking obligation to not poison World Cup visitors with bad American beer."Oh dear. 40 million can't buy that much bad PR, can it? I suppose if you are forced to call your beer "The Official Beer of the 2006 FIFA World Cup" rather than its own name, it can.
Comments
Evghenis - June 23, 2006 4:27 PM
Interestingly, the Czech brewer, known in North America as Czechvar is actually called Budvar in Czech, which comes out as Budweisser in German (hence the lawsuit which resulted in it being called Czechvar). Maybe some conspiracy to replace the American crap with decent Czech beer could be thought up before July 9.
Alan - June 23, 2006 5:03 PM
Are you advocating covert keg swapping by key insiders?
Joe - June 25, 2006 10:04 PM
There are some things which strike me as such astonishingly bad ideas that I can't believe they're actually contemplated, much less implemented. Basic Instinct II was one; this is another.
Mike The Knife - June 26, 2006 6:26 PM
The Leviathan American brewers cannot simply throw money at a problem & make it go away- the problem (problems actually) being essentially that: 1) American Bud is Bad Beer. 2) It's made in America- the world hates America right now.
Even if we were to fill the stadiums w/ the cream of American Microbrews, they'd still hate it. There is/was no shortage of resentment toward AB regarding the legal wrangling w/ Eurodarlings Budvar. (a far superior product to US Bud)
The rest of the world just chuckles & shakes their collective heads @ the USA when American Beer is concerned- that amiable dismissiveness could/can/will change if & when a major US-based marketing blitz starts to crowd out local product. The world will vote w/ their wallets & the major US brewers will look pretty silly. Or maybe it's the impetus required for them to follow the lead of the rest of the world & the burgeoning Microbrew business into producing a potable alternative to the least-common-denominator liquid passed off as beer.
(This humble opinion coming from a former ex-pat Yank who spent a couple of years yanking suds behind a few bars in Germany.)
Evghenis - June 28, 2006 2:08 PM
Problem with "covert keg swapping" would be that the public would still assume the product on tap is the american crap. Perhaps a secretive word of mouth campaign regarding the keg swapping would work. But Budvar likely wouldn't want to let the Americans take the profits.