USC, Clemson Upset About Beer “Fan Cans”

Just in time for the start of the college football season, Anheuser-Busch is offering Bud Light in special “Fan Cans”. Instead of the blue cans that Bud Light usually comes in, you can buy it in your school’s colors. The Clemson cans are orange and white. The University of South Carolina cans are maroon and white. Neither one is an exact match for the school colors, since USC is known for garnet and black and Clemson for orange and purple, but the cans’ color schemes are used for multiple schools and teams that use similar colors.

The cans don’t have any school names or logos on them, but they still have school officials upset. “It’s something we’re not happy about,“ says Jerry Brewer, associate vice president of student affairs at USC. “We have no interest, the university, in associating ourselves with any alcoholic beverage promotion.“

Clemson is working through the Atlantic Coast Conference to complain to Anheuser-Busch.

One of the objections is that the cans might encourage underage drinking. USC freshman Woody Angle says, “If there is a can that was directly related with my school or something like that, I’d definitely feel more inclined to ... it would definitely encourage underage drinking, I believe.“ 

But USC student Brenard Pauling of Spartanburg thinks price is the biggest factor that influences which beer college students buy, and the Bud Light “fan cans” are more expensive. “Maybe the students that have a lot of school pride would be like, ‘Oh yeah, we have our own beer cans now. Let me get this for a souvenir.‘ But nothing more than that,“ he says.

Carol Clark, Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility for Anheuser-Busch, responded to our questions about the “fan cans” with this written statement:

“The Fan Can program provides Bud Light packaging in color schemes to connect with fans of legal drinking age in fun ways in select markets across a variety of sports.  The program is one of many elements that make up our overall Bud Light marketing plan, and this program is expressly timed to coincide with the beginning of the football season and baseball playoffs.  These cans carry no third-party logos, names or other proprietary identifiers.  Like all of our beers, these cans are sold through licensed retailers where consumers must be 21 or older to purchase the product. 

This is a voluntary program made available to all wholesalers nationwide, and roughly half of our wholesalers are participating.  We offered a variety of color combinations to choose from and in some cases, wholesalers have ordered multiple color combinations.

We place great value in the relationships we’ve built with college administrators and campus communities across the country.  Certain cans are not being made available in communities where organizations had asked us not to offer them.

Anheuser-Busch has a longstanding commitment to promoting responsible drinking.  Our company’s position on college drinking is clear:  if students are 21 or older and choose to drink, we want them to do so responsibly; if they are under 21, we want them to respect the law and not drink.  Since 1982, Anheuser-Busch and our wholesalers across the country have invested more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to help prevent alcohol abuse, including underage drinking and drunk driving.“