(Headline USA) Video footage from the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota shows Budweiser’s sponsor tents completely empty as the brand’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, continues to battle the fall-out from its fatal partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally attracts tens of thousands of bikers from all over the world every year. More than 250,000 vehicles have passed through the area since last Friday, according to event organizers.
The event also brings in many high-profile corporate sponsors, including Budweiser, which brought in its iconic Clydesdale horses to kick off the rally on Friday.
However, rally attendees are apparently avoiding direct association with Budweiser. The brand’s tents and booths stood nearly empty at one point, according to video footage from the event.
“Right now, maybe because of the bad PR, the controversy, people [are] staying away,” said one rally attendee in a video uploaded to the TikTok account Cycledrag.
Cycledrag posted a follow-up video the next day, and found Budweiser’s tents just as empty as the day before.
“Sturgis is absolutely jam-packed,” Cycledrag notes. “The Harley[-Davidson] tent is packed, the BMW tent is packed, but Budweiser [is] having a tough go. There must be a whole lot of beer left over in there. I don’t know what to say.”
Budweiser vendors at Sturgis 2023. 😂😂😂
— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) August 11, 2023
Anheuser-Busch, which owns both Budweiser and Bud Light, has suffered a catastrophic collapse in sales after Bud Light partnered with Mulvaney to celebrate the biological male influencer’s “transition to girlhood.”
In a statement last week, the heir to Anheuser-Busch blasted the company executives responsible for the partnership, and said his ancestors would be “rolling in their graves” if they could see what’s happened to its brand.
“I think my family — my ancestors would have rolled over in their graves,” Billy Busch told TMZ. “They believed that transgender, gays, that sort of thing was all a very personal issue. They loved this country because it is a free country and people are allowed to do what they want, but it was never meant to be on a beer can and never meant to be pushed in people’s faces.”
