Perhaps best known for its Super Bowl Clydesdale ads, Budweiser is among the world’s most popular beer brands. It was among the first beers to achieve national distribution in the late 19th century, thanks to its revolutionary refrigeration and pasteurization techniques, setting the stage for the modern US beer industry.
Founded in the 1850s as the “Bavarian Brewery,” the company was acquired in 1860 by Eberhard Anheuser. He sold half of it to his son-in-law Adolphus Busch in 1869, forming the partnership that would become Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, Missouri.
In the 1870s, Carl Conrad, a St. Louis distributor, traveled through a Bohemian town called “Budweis” in German and drank a pale lager. Upon returning home, he worked with Anheuser-Busch to brew its own light lager, marketing it under the name “Budweiser.” The beer became Anheuser-Busch’s first national flagship product, but its origin story led to one of the longest-running trademark disputes in modern commercial history.
Historically, Budweiser has been among the Super Bowl’s biggest ad spenders. Its Clydesdales have appeared in 47 Super Bowl commercials over the years—Anheuser-Busch has spent an estimated $529M on Super Bowl spots over the past five decades.
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Budweiser’s famous Clydesdales, including the ones you see in Super Bowl commercials, live a cushy lifestyle on Warm Springs Ranch in Boonville, Missouri. The ranch is home to roughly 70 and 80 Clydesdales at any given time.
He helped commercialize the beer and licensed the Budweiser name. Before working with Anheuser-Busch, Conrad was a US importer of wines, champagnes, and liquors.
From Eberhard Anheuser’s purchase of the Bavarian Brewery in 1860 to the Anheuser-Busch and InBev merger that created what became the world’s largest brewer, this historical timeline highlights the most significant moments in Budweiser’s more than 150-year story.
Between 2011 and 2021, AB InBev and MolsonCoors (two of the leading beer parent companies in the US) experienced a combined 17% drop in US market share. Budweiser parent company AB InBev has focused on premiumization and diversifying their product offerings in recent years to combat the losses.
Over the past few decades, as craft beer from smaller breweries has become more popular (as well as seltzers, light beers, and other alternatives), Budweiser’s market share has declined.
This helped reveal the marketing power of a horse-drawn beer wagon, so it invested in a second six-horse Clydesdale hitch. The Clydesdales soon went to New York, where they drew a crowd of thousands en route to the Empire State Building. Anheuser-Busch even gifted a case of Budweiser to New York Governor Alfred E. Smith in thanks for his help in the fight against Prohibition.
While many traditional histories credit German immigrant George Schneider with founding the Bavarian Brewery in 1852, an investigation from St. Louis Magazine found that it was actually started in 1857 by a fascinating German physician named Dr. Adam Hammer.
In the run-up to the 2016 United States Presidential Election, Budweiser changed its name as part of a marketing campaign that ran from the end of May through the November election itself.
The giant beverage holding company AB InBev owns many, many more brands than just Budweiser and Bud Light. From Africa to Asia and beyond, this image helps visualize the immense number of brands that AB InBev is responsible for.
During the late 1800s when Budweiser beers hit the market, darker, all‑malt lagers dominated the US beer market. Budweiser was brewed with a single, consistent yeast strain that gave it a crisp uniform flavor, differentiating it from darker beers.
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