Beverage ads are flooding the Super Bowl, threatening to drown out beer brands

Beer and the Super Bowl go together like a (Budweiser) horse and carriage.

But in 2026, four years after AB InBev’s 34-year reign as the exclusive alcohol advertiser of the game came to an end, screens across the country are set to be saturated with beverage ads of all kinds on Super Bowl Sunday.

AB InBev is still expected to dominate Super Bowl ad screentime, with two and a half minutes of ads planned across its Budweiser, Bud Light, and Michelob Ultra brands, but the brewer is facing stiff competition from other segments of the beverage industry. In the hard-alcohol category, Svedka is joining the party as the first vodka brand to advertise in the Super Bowl since at least 1989, while Diageo brands Don Julio, Captain Morgan, and Smirnoff all have experiential campaigns planned around the game.

Further still, alcoholic beverage ads will bump up against commercials for drinks that might be more appealing to health- and hydration-conscious viewers, including brands like Liquid I.V., Liquid Death, and Poppi, as well as ads promoting healthier food options and weight-loss drugs.

With many Americans focused on fitness, fiber, and protein over beer and bowls of chips, it raises the question: Is there still room for beer on the Super Bowl stage?

Beer brand execs, as well as the results of last year’s Ad Meter, indicate there’s enduring interest in beer ads, but the legacy football advertisers will have to continue stepping up their game to crack through the noise on Super Bowl Sunday.

“The Super Bowl is a special stage for any brand,” Ricardo Marques, SVP of marketing for Michelob Ultra, told Marketing Brew. “Recognizing that, there’s always, in any given year, a lot going on, always many different brands bringing their very best creative work forward. That’s not lost on us.”

Very liquid

During AB InBev’s years of exclusivity, the share of alcohol ads—mostly beer—as a portion of total Super Bowl ads stayed largely the same, usually in the range of 10%–13% from 2011 through 2022, according to data from iSpot. In 2023, the first year post-exclusivity, that share jumped to 15%, spurred by ads from companies including Molson Coors, Heineken, Crown Royal, and Rémy Martin.

The past two years, however, have marked 15-year lows in the share of alcohol ads, according to iSpot.

This year, with increasing beverage competition, beer brands have their work cut out for them; at the same time that there’s more advertiser competition, US adults, particularly younger ones, are drinking less, with many saying they are concerned about the health effects of alcohol. Liquid I.V. CMO Stacey Andrade-Wells said she thinks her company’s healthy lifestyle messaging “allows us to speak to a younger audience” more easily than other brands, though she noted that when it comes to beer and wellness, it’s not necessarily one or the other.

“It’s actually a great juxtaposition to have that kind of experiential moment on Sunday and still be receiving messages from a lot of health and wellness brands that know that, come Monday, you’re going to be looking for a solution to get back on track,” she told Marketing Brew.

Bud Light SVP of Marketing Todd Allen is betting that plenty of people do, in fact, still want to crack open a cold one, and like last year, Bud Light is sticking to what’s proven to work. This year’s spot is a comedic ad starring Post Malone, Shane Gillis, and Peyton Manning, all of whom have appeared in previous brand Super Bowl ads.

“We had so much success last year that we decided to run it back with them,” Allen said, later adding that the 2025 work “was one of our most talked about campaigns across media, across social, across PR, that we have done in years.”

Sister brand Michelob Ultra switched up its cast, tapping actors Kurt Russell and Lewis Pullman and Olympians Chloe Kim and T. J. Oshie for this year’s spot, but took the same general creative approach as last year, pairing actors with athletes in an ad that emphasizes competition and active lifestyles, Marques said. The brand’s 2025 pickleball-themed creative featuring Willem Dafoe, Catherine O’Hara, and a roster of pro athletes was “incredibly well received,” he said.

Budweiser is embracing its tried-and-true playbook as well, with an Americana-drenched ad starring a Clydesdale foal.

Tap the keg

Beer brands are also facing competition from hard alcohol on the ground and on social, as 360-degree Super Bowl campaigns have become all but essential across categories.

From the Diageo portfolio, Don Julio is running a social series and hosting multiple events in San Francisco, while Captain Morgan will have an experiential presence around Levi’s Stadium and in Gainesville, Florida. Smirnoff, meanwhile, is collaborating with designer Aleali May on a limited-edition shirt and one-of-a-kind jacket that it’s unveiling on a branded trolley; it’s also sponsoring Super Bowl weekend events, including GLAAD’s Night of Pride and the NFL Game Day Experience.

For Smirnoff, the official vodka sponsor of the NFL, the IRL activations are meant to appeal to younger audiences, Jennifer Holiday Hudson, North America brand leader for Smirnoff Vodka, told us.

“We prioritized meeting Gen Z where fandom lives—online and at third spaces like tailgates or in the stadium—rather than relying on a single TV moment,” she said in an email.

Beer marketers, too, know the importance of experiences when it comes to moving the needle. Michelob Ultra is tying its Super Bowl campaign to its Team USA sponsorship, as the Olympics kick off two days before the Super Bowl: The brand’s Olympic campaign is bookended by its “Run Back the Miracle” fan event from January and an upcoming summit in Park City, Utah, and the Super Bowl ad, which features Olympic athletes, is meant as an “in-between,” Marques said.

Bud Light, which is hosting a concert with Post Malone in SF on Friday, offered hundreds of Seahawks and Patriots fans the chance to win kegs of beer at their home stadiums last weekend. Social content like teasers and posts from celebrity partners will also be “absolutely critical” to its campaign, Allen said.

As an AB InBev brand and the official beer sponsor of the NFL for almost three decades, Bud Light has one more trick to standing out on game day, one that newcomers will have a hard time replicating: legacy.

“We’ve been a part of these iconic moments for over 35 years,” he said. “We know how important the moment is, bringing people together over the most-watched live sports telecast of the year, every year.”