Budweiser ties up with ICC in AB InBev's first cricket outing with a 2-year sponsorship contract

Mumbai: AB InBev, the maker of Budweiser beer, announced a two-year sponsorship contract with the International Cricket Council on Thursday, spanning men’s and women’s tournaments in all formats from 2026.

This is Budweiser’s first association with cricket. AB InBev, the world’s largest beer maker, has officially sponsored several major sporting events including the FIFA World Cup in 2022 and the Summer Olympics in 2024.

“[We will] be looking at activating this in many different ways,” said Kartikeya Sharma, president of AB InBev India. “This is a lot about the on-ground experience, the scale of our country to go beyond just the stadium into bars, people’s homes, into the community of content that people engage with online.”

“This partnership is truly glocal,” Sanjog Gupta, chief executive officer (CEO) of ICC, told reporters at a press briefing. “It is globally significant but locally relevant and contextual.”

In India, AB InBev’s partnership with the ICC will “largely revolve” around Budweiser but in other markets where the ICC hosts tournaments, local AB InBev outposts may pick other local brands better positioned to be associated with sports.

The partnership will cover the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 in India and Sri Lanka, the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2026 in the UK, the inaugural ICC Women’s Champions Trophy 2027 in Sri Lanka, the ICC World Test Championship Final 2027 in England and the ICC Men's ODI Cricket World Cup 2027 in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

From music to sport

In India, Budweiser’s partnerships have almost entirely focused on music, sponsoring marquee events such as Boiler Room, Lollapalooza India, and now Rolling Loud India. Its partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA) league in the US this year was part of a music event called NBA House held in Mumbai in June.

“We started with music because we felt at the time that beer consumed in bars, pubs, and various kinds of lounges was brought down to drinking the cheapest available beer on tap,” Sharma said. “We recognized an opportunity for premium beers provided we also bring the requisite experiences. We started with music with that idea to create the environment where people come in and start paying a premium for beer.”

AB InBev is more confident today about associating with a sport of the scale that cricket brings and adding value to it, he said.

Sales of beer in India this year were severely affected after an unusually long monsoon ate into peak demand in the summer. In Karnataka, a significant market for alcohol, sales were hurt after the state increased excise duty on beer multiple times.

Sharma said beer sales in Karnataka were down 20% year on year. United Breweries – the maker of India’s largest beer brand Kingfisher – reported an almost 3% drop in sales and a 65% decline in profit after tax for the September quarter.

“Partnering with cricket makes sense for a brand like Budweiser because the culture of sports bars is still developing in India,” said Karan Kamdar, research analyst at brokerage firm Choice Institutional Equities. “For example, you still can’t buy alcohol in stadiums during matches.”

He added that competition in the premium beer space is heating up as legacy brands look for higher-margin growth in big cities but fight for market share with draft and craft beers. These smaller makers offer home delivery too in some major cities.

“Data shows 80% of alcohol consumption, on average, happens at home and not on-premise,” Kamdar said. “With that in mind, Budweiser may be able to drive more association with not just sports but also at-home consumption.”

AB InBev’s partnership comes at a delicate time for the ICC. JioStar wants to exit its India media rights contract to broadcast ICC matches because they are too expensive, The Economic Times reported this week. AB InBev is not concerned for now.

“Not at all,” Sharma said, when asked if the company was concerned about ICC potentially losing a broadcaster for its upcoming tournaments in India.

“We are coming in with a lot of humility to add to our roster of global partnership of sports… we have a thesis on what we can do with this partnership. We are coming in with a gigantic amount of optimism. At our end, it makes a lot of intuitive sense. For us, everything syncs up at this point of time and anything else happening in the media landscape may not be very perturbing at this point of time.”