Things just got a little easier for New Jersey craft breweries planning to play the remaining games of the NFL season in their taprooms.
The state division of alcoholic beverage control (NJABC) has waived its requirement that breweries submit 10 days’ notice before special on-premise events in their taprooms, which include broadcasting professional sports games. The requirement is part of a larger set of conditions that were issued in 2019 but paused during the COVID-19 pandemic. NJABC announced it would resume enforcing them on July 1, 2022.
However, NJABC director James B. Graziano can “relax certain special rulings if there will not be undue hardship, economic or otherwise, if the relaxation will not unduly burden any affected parties and it is consistent with the underlying purpose of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act,” according to a notice published yesterday.
Because the Philadelphia Eagles, who have a strong fan base in the state’s southern half, qualified for the NFC championship on January 21, breweries would not have had 10 days to notify the NJABC of their plans to play the game for taproom guests.
“Relaxation of the 10-day notification will not unduly burden competitors (e.g., licensees who operate sports bars), and failure to relax in this context would visit undue economic hardship on limited breweries,” Graziano wrote in the notice. “Moreover, in order to eliminate the need for another special ruling and to accommodate limited brewery licensees, the Division finds that relaxing the 10-day notification for the Super Bowl on February 12, 2023, is also not inappropriate.”
Playing either game on a taproom TV counts toward a brewery’s 25 on-site events per year, Graziano added.
The 2019 conditions were an attempt to strike a balance between the privileges afforded to craft breweries and on-premise licensees, which pay a larger fee for their operating licenses. However, breweries have called the restrictions unjustly harsh.
“Breweries are only selling the beer they brew,” Brewers Guild of New Jersey executive director Eric Orlando told WPVI Action News. “Sports bars down the street have a multitude of beverage options to their consumers, plus they have the ability to sell food.”
Orlando and Jersey City-based Departed Soles founder Brian Kulbacki discussed the restrictions’ impact on Garden State breweries on the Brewbound Podcast in July 2022.
Molson Coors Partners with DraftKings on Super Bowl Ad Hype; Coors Light & Miller Lite to be Featured
Molson Coors is partnering with DraftKings to allow 21-and-up consumers to predict for free what will happen during the company’s first big game ad in 30 years. What unsurprisingly won’t be a mystery is the ad will feature both Coors Light and Miller Lite in a competition of “mountain cold refreshment” versus “great taste, 96 calories,” the company shared in a teaser today titled “the high stakes beer ad.”
The DraftKings wager for a total of $500,000 in cash payouts, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, will allow consumers in 49 states (with the exception of Virginia) to predict 12 elements of the ad, such as which beer will be mentioned first, an over-under on how many people in the ad will have facial hair, and a question on what type of dog is pictured behind the bar.
“Our campaign will launch during this weekend’s NFC/AFC championship games, as well as on YouTube, Hulu, NBA and NHL games, paid social, influencer partnerships, and a PR blitz,” Molson Coors chief marketing officer Michelle St. Jacques wrote in a distributor note today. “And we’re investing more than $1 million in retail-focused media that will drive conversion with key chains and online platforms.”
Molson Coors won’t share the actual Super Bowl commercial “until the big day,” St. Jacques said
“But I promise the ad itself is epic and not even [Molson Coors CEO] Gavin [Hattersley] knows which brand will prevail,” she added.
Dogfish Head Spending $7,000 on Super Bowl Ad
Dogfish Head will be buying regional airtime during the Super Bowl this year, albeit with an investment much smaller than its competitors. The Milton, Delaware-based craft brewery is spending $7,000 for a 30-second spot that will be broadcast in its home market of Delmarva, covering Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. The company said the market ranks 137 out of 210, allowing it to spend “1,000 times less than some advertisers.”
The Dogfish Head spot, starring co-founder Sam Calagione, mocks the hype around big game ads, while also spotlighting Tudor Games’ Electric Football vibrating game, which Calagione used to create a continual hopping method for brewing beers such as 60 Minute, 90 Minute and 120 Minute IPAs.
“From one of the smallest craft breweries in America to one of the smallest Big Game commercial spends, we felt it only fitting to air our spot featuring a tiny football game exclusively in our slight but mighty backyard, coastal Delaware,” Calagione said in the release. “At Dogfish, we take what we do seriously … Ourselves? Not so much.”
Dogfish Head will host the Electric Football World Championships February 4 and 5 as the game’s official sponsor.
A-B Teases Budweiser Super Bowl Ads, Launches 1st Bud Light Creative with New Agency
Even after relinquishing exclusivity over alcoholic beverage advertising during the Super Bowl, Anheuser-Busch has booked 3 minutes and 30 seconds of big game ad time.
The world’s largest beer manufacturer has slowly teased the creative for its Budweiser ad spot, first with Kevin Bacon narrating the first teaser and a second featuring Grammy-nominated hip-hop artist and producer Metro Boomin that ends with the reintroduction of the brand’s trademark tagline “This Bud’s for you.”
The company promised that the “This Bud’s for you” tagline “will come to life in” in this year’s Super Bowl ad and throughout 2023.
Meanwhile, the first Bud Light ad under the beer brand’s new creative agency of record Anomaly was released earlier this week. In the spot, a woman carries five pints of Bud Light through a crowded bar as Notorious BIG’s “Hypnotize” plays. The woman weaves her way through the crowd and several obstacles, gives a wink and sets the pints down to applause from her friends as the tagline flips from “Easy to Drink” to “Easy to Enjoy.”
Following a split with Wieden+Kennedy last year, the ad marks a new direction away from humor for the Bud Light beer brand, according to AdAge.