Budweiser deleted a tweet after Qatar banned beer sales in its World Cup stadiums
The World Cup doesn’t begin until Sunday, but there was big news about the tournament on Friday.
Qatar, the host nation, is banning the sale of beer at its stadiums, as FIFA announced Friday morning.
“Following discussions between host country authorities and FIFA, a decision has been made to focus the sale of alcoholic beverages on the FIFA Fan Festival, other fan destinations and licensed venues, removing the sales points of beer from Qatar’s FIFA World Cup 2022 stadium perimeters,” FIFA said in a statement shared on Twitter.
Although Budweiser Zero, which is alcohol free, will be available at the stadiums, the change would seem to be bad news for Anheuser-Busch InBev, one of the official World Cup sponsors.
Budweiser seemed to be caught off-guard by the decision, because many people saw this tweet from the company: “Well, this is awkward...” after the FIFA announcement.
Although Budweiser deleted the tweet, screenshots were shared on Twitter.
Budweiser is the beer brand sponsoring the World Cup
Qatar just flipped and ruled that no beer is to be sold at the venues
This tweet (now deleted) seemed more than fair pic.twitter.com/YDb2ItHxEg— Mihnea Miculescu (@Mihnea) November 18, 2022
Budweiser deleted the tweet. Thats awkward. pic.twitter.com/wZavHlNgLi
— Gjert Moldestad (@gjertm) November 18, 2022
— Łukasz Opala (@Lukasz_Rolson) November 18, 2022
It looks like @Budweiser has deleted a tweet commenting on Qatar’s decision to ban the sale of beer at all @FIFAWorldCupQTR matches, breaking a promise it gave in order to stage the tournament, & impacting Bud’s contract with @FIFAcom. pic.twitter.com/skL4g6dFlJ
— Bill Neely (@BillNeelyReport) November 18, 2022
The Financial Times, which reported about the deleted tweet, got this response from AB InBev: “As partners of FIFA for over three decades, we look forward to World Cup campaigns to celebrate football with our consumers. Some of the planned stadium activations cannot move forward due to circumstances beyond our control.”
Yeah, that really is awkward.
