Dear Client:
Constellation Brands announced its “most comprehensive arena sponsorship” yesterday, signing on as the top sponsor for the Barclays Center and the NBA team it houses – the Brooklyn Nets.
This is a major move for Constellation as they snatch the title of “preeminent sponsor” from Anheuser-Busch, who has held the “broad category rights since 2012,” per Sports Business Journal.
The “new marketing alliance” with Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment (the business enterprise that controls and manages the Barclays Center and the Nets) will designate Corona Extra and Modelo Especial “as the Official Import Beer Sponsor” of the Barclays Center, and Brooklyn Nets, respectively. While Ballast Point will now be the “Official Craft Beer Sponsor of Barclays Center.”
The agreement also awards Constellation with three individually branded bars at Barclays Center: “The Corona Extra Beach House Bar”; a Modelo Especial branded bar dubbed “Casa Modelo”, and a Ballast Point branded bar. All three of the branded bars are slated to open up before 2016.
“The Corona Extra Beach House Bar, slated for the arena’s main concourse, replaces an A-B-branded bar and will be the only place” in NYC where Corona will be available on draft, per report.
Additionally, “Corona Extra and Modelo Especial will receive marketing exposure during a wide variety of programming events at Barclays Center, including Brooklyn Nets games, as well as through digital platforms and in-arena signage,” per release.
“Barclays Center has become a modern icon in the sports and music world – a truly can’t-miss venue for entertainment,” said Jim Sabia, CMO for Constellation Brands’ Beer Division. “We’re thrilled to align with Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment to further promote and build our iconic Corona Extra and Modelo Especial brands in Brooklyn.”
“They’re going to activate the Nets and the Barclays Center throughout the marketplace,” said Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment CEO Brett Yormark, “so aside from a nice financial commitment, that’s what really got us excited about this deal.”
PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE BILL COULD PUT RETAIL DISTRIBS OUT OF BUSINESS
Another attempt to update Pennsylvania alcohol laws has left the industry somewhat divided.
As the Morning Call reported last week, House Bill 1196 could reach the Governor’s desk as early as this week. The measure would allow beer distributors sell six-packs and single bottles. But it would also require retail beer distributors – the state’s so-called fourth tier – to sell product only in the territorial confines of the larger beer wholesalers they buy from. That’s a problem, for those who buy and sell along territorial lines.
Currently, “there is no provision against their reselling a wholesaler’s product in another wholesaler’s territory,” per Morning Call.
In other words: “If the governor signs the bill, retail distributors and all licensed establishments will have to abide by the same territorial rules dictated in private wholesaler-brewer agreements.”
Big beer wholesalers back the measure. Pennsylvania Beer Alliance chief Jay Weiderhold told the Morning Call that his state has long had a “problem” of product traceability: “We have a retail distributor taking from one area and driving it into another wholesaler’s area,” he told the paper. There’s “no transparency, no ability to track that product.”
Indeed some of our sources said big beer, who like to be able to track their product, could be behind the measure too, which was added as an amendment later in the game.
Brewers of Pennsylvania counsel Ted Zeller told BBD that, though this measure may have been partially hatched to head off central warehousing from big retailers – for example, “preventing someone like a Wegman’s from getting a distributor license in the middle of the state and then distributing for all its supermarkets” – there are laws on the books to prevent that anyway.
And the fallout for some players could be huge. For one, these small retail distributors carved out a living servicing other retailers in urban, out-of-the-way places. And they’re less likely to have case minimums.
“So to the extent that some of these distributors are on a border, they could be losing 40%-50% of their accounts. That’s significant,” he said.
Bill proponent Sen. Chuck McIlhinney has a response to those who complain the measure could cost them that much business. To one family-owned retail beer distributor on a dividing line, who complained that the provision could put his 7-decade business out of business, the Senator apparently believes he deserves it. “He’s crossing territory in a predatory way to steal business from people in another county that can’t compete,” he told the paper.
BEER AND WINE STILL LOSING SHARE TO BOOZE ON PREMISE (BUT BEER IS WORSE)
Latest Nielsen CGA on-premise numbers to September 10 show more of the sad same for beer: spirits siphoning share from beer (and wine) in restaurants, bars and clubs.
Per recent report, Nielsen CGA on-premise measures through September 10 show spirits volumes are up almost 2% for 52 weeks, and dollars up almost 3%. But beer is down 3% in volume and more than 1% in dollars. Wine is also down for 52 weeks (down 1% in volume and down to flat in dollars, though it’s growing the last 12 weeks, with volumes up more than 2% and dollars up almost 3%).
Until tomorrow, Harry
“People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.” – E. B. White
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