For years one of the most anticipated elements of the Super Bowl has been the commercials. New cars, potato chips, insurance companies, and soda brands are common appearances during the big game. But perhaps the most famous and memorable advertisements have been, of course, the beer commercials.

The Budweiser frogs, the “waaaaaazuuuuup” phone calls, the Clydesdale horses: all are stored in our collective memories of America’s biggest single-day sporting event: Super Bowl Sunday. Popular beer brands and their commercials and advertisements have long been synonymous with sports, events, stadiums, and other enterprises via their often long-standing sponsorships.

Hard seltzer brands are proving to be no exception. As their popularity grows exponentially, so do their major sponsorships. Last year, the popular Bon & Viv brand, owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, became the “Official Hard Seltzer Sponsor of the NFL.” Months later, Truly Hard Seltzer broke new ground with its sponsorship for JetBlue, establishing itself as the first official hard seltzer of an airline, and simultaneously becoming the first alcoholic seltzer brand to be served in-flight.

This year, in January, White Claw surpassed beer as the main sponsor of its category for South by Southwest (SXSW). As PR Newswire reported: “This unprecedented move marks a pivotal shift in consumer preference towards the growing hard seltzer category – coupling the hottest alcoholic beverage in the United States with the world’s premier event celebrating the intersection of music, film and emerging technologies.”

Even the college sports market has been infiltrated by hard seltzer brands, with Natural Light Seltzer being announced as the Official Hard Seltzer of the Big 12 Conference. The list goes on and on, and given how popular hard seltzers had become prior to these major deals, it seems like the only way to go is upward.

A Nielsen article with the title “Hard Seltzer Defies Categorization and Limits as the Most Resilient Alcohol Segment in the U.S.” had this to say: “The explosion of the hard seltzer segment has caught the attention of many companies eager to grab a piece of the rapidly expanding pie. At the beginning of 2018, just 10 hard seltzer brands were on the market. That number rose to 26 brands by the beginning of 2019, and more than 65 brands are now fighting for consumers’ attention and purchase—with about half using a unique brand name, and the other half pivoting off an existing beer brand name.”

Hard seltzer, it seems safe now to say, isn’t going away. And with new brands and flavors appearing at such a rapid pace, compounded with major sponsorships of everything from sports franchises to airlines, the market for these tasty and low-carb drinks is only expanding. The future of flavored alcohol is here, and it’s hard seltzer.

James Granatowski
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