Anheuser-Busch is set to flood the zone on Super Bowl Sunday.
A big game staple for almost all of the past 50 years, the beverage giant will be impossible to miss from kickoff to the final gun of Super Bowl 59, with a whopping 3 ½ minutes of ad time touching four of their biggest brands.
Their big buy – the rate for 30 seconds on Fox’s broadcast was up to about $8 million – makes them the No. 1 alcohol advertiser on the game, this just four years after its legacy label, Budweiser, sat out the game altogether.
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Not so in 2025, where equine staples and stars of stage, screen and sport indicate Anheuser-Busch is adopting a most aggressive stance.
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“This is a privilege that our company and brands get associated with this massive moment in culture,” says Kyle Norrington, Anheuser-Busch’s chief commercial officer.
“It means a lot, not only to our marketing team but to the 65,000 people in our Anheuser-Busch system that make this the moment it deserves to be in culture in America. We don’t take that privilege lightly.”
Clydesdales: Back to the basics
The last add to the Super Bowl lineup was its most iconic: Anheuser-Busch elevated Budweiser from a regional to a national spot after getting positive internal feedback on its spot starring yet another Clydesdale.
This time, “First Delivery” highlights a Clydesdale foal who shows his keeper that he’s ready for a chance to join the pack. It is, Norrington says, the 47th Super Bowl ad featuring a Clydesdale.
“We hear from our fans that Super Bowl is just not the same without the iconic Clydesdales,” says Norrington. “(First Delivery) reinforces that we’ve been delivering since 1876 and will continue for decades to come.”
Beyond the Clydesdales, Peyton Manning is proving to be something of a horse for Anheuser-Busch, himself.
The longtime Bud Light ambassador completes a troika with comedian Shane Gillis and pop star Post Malone after the latter two teased their Super appearance in an ad during the conference championship games.
They comprise the Big Men on the Cul-de-Sac, charged with enlivening tract-home afternoons with some macrobrew and barbecue. Manning and Post Malone are reunited for a second consecutive year.
Stella Artois enlists Matt Damon, David Beckham
Meanwhile, the fast-growing Michelob Ultra label takes its active-lifestyle mien to a higher level, with septuagenarian performers Catherine O’Hara and Willem Dafoe posing as pickleball hustlers, the better to cop Ultras off unsuspecting athletes such as Sabrina Ionescu, shot put gold medalist Ryan Crouser and NFL Hall of Famer Randy Moss.
Moss will appear on the Super Sunday screen two months after surgery to remove a cancerous mass from his bile duct.
“We’ll respect Randy’s privacy at this moment,” says Norrington. “He’s been an amazing partner, a Hall of Famer and is very excited about this ad coming to life, as are we.”
Another athlete who seized prominence in the late ‘90s, soccer star David Beckham, teams with Matt Damon to round out Anheuser-Busch’s brand attack. Their Stella Artois spot, “David and Dave,” pits the pair as long-lost brothers reunited around beer.
It won’t be the last we’ll see of the duo, as Norrington notes the Super Bowl spot kicks off “a fully-integrated campaign from now until the end of the year.”
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