Not that Chicago Bears fans need any more reason to hit the bottle after last season, but they’ll have more regularly scheduled encouragement during commercial breaks this year.
The National Football League is ending its ban on liquor advertisements, at least as a test for the upcoming season. For the first time ever, spirits companies, such as Chicago-based Beam Suntory, will be able to market to national audiences during games on network television this season. The move represents a win for the spirits industry, which has consistently swiped market share from beer in recent years.
It’s unclear whether new Jim Beam commercials will be in the mix. Beam Suntory spokeswoman Emily York said it was too early to discuss any plans and declined to comment further.
There are some restrictions on the liquor ads that don’t apply to beer commercials: No more than four 30-second ads per game and no more than two of them in a quarter. All liquor ads have to include “prominent social responsibility” messages, according to information first reported by The Wall Street Journal and later confirmed with the NFL. The ads can’t have a football theme or target youths, among other rules.
But suffice to say, it’s a happy moment in time for liquor companies and much less so for purveyors of beer.
“It’s been long, slow recognition that a drink is a drink is a drink,” said Frank Coleman, spokesman for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, the industry group representing spirits companies.
From 1948 to 1996, the spirits industry operated under a self-imposed ban on broadcast advertising, Coleman said. Since then, spirits companies have gradually gained broader social acceptance and have in recent years signed marketing deals with sports franchises, though that’s still prohibited in the NFL.
In recent years, the Bears have made spirits more readily available at Soldier Field as part of a broader effort to upgrade the fan experience, including an “upscale sports bar” located in the 14,000-square-foot indoor space on the west side of the stadium known as The Midway, said Bears spokesman Brandon Faber.
Other major professional sports leagues already allow televised advertising of spirits brands; the NFL was the final holdout, Coleman said. In a fragmented media world, football — America’s most popular sport — provides spirits companies the increasingly rare opportunity to market to a large national audience for 30 seconds at a time, he said.
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In other words, an occasion that once belonged to beer commercials now must be shared.
“It’s one of the last shoes to drop in terms of the spirits industry being able to encroach upon the beer industry. … Spirits has been outperforming beer for at least a decade. This certainly doesn’t help,” said Eric Shepard, executive editor of Beer Marketer’s Insights, a trade publication covering the beer industry.
Despite the NFL’s decision to allow liquor commercials, Chicago-based MillerCoors isn’t crying into its beer.
“As the beverage of moderation, beer and football have been synonymous for decades. As long as we continue to differentiate our brands, promote them responsibly and advertise effectively, we will be just fine,” MillerCoors spokesman Marty Maloney said in an emailed statement.
Beer still commanded about 47 percent of market share of the alcohol industry last year, in terms of supplier sales to wholesalers, but spirits, at about 36 percent, and wine, at about 17 percent, have steadily grown in recent years while beer has fizzled, according to 2016 economic data from the Distilled Spirits Council.
“At first blush, (the NFL’s decision to lift the ban on liquor ads) certainly appears to be an incremental positive for the spirits industry and an incremental negative for the beer industry, said Robert Ottenstein, an analyst with Evercore ISI. “But I don’t think it’s going to be a game changer. No pun intended.”