Anheuser-Busch withdraws San Francisco Pride sponsorship, leaving organizers scrambling

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Bud Light employees at the 2017 Toronto Pride Parade.

Anheuser-Busch is one of several large companies that have recently withdrawn their sponsorship from San Francisco’s June 2025 Pride celebration, leaving the event’s organizers searching for $300,000 to make up for the lost cash. Right-wingers boycotted Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light in 2023 after the beer brand promoted transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

Anheuser-Busch withdrew its sponsorship alongside wine company La Crema, Guinness beer production company Diageo, and telecommunication company Comcast. All the companies cited a “lack of funds” as their reasons, but Suzanne Ford, executive director of San Francisco Pride, a non-profit organization, told SFGATE that it was “very abnormal” for several multiyear sponsors to suddenly withdraw their support without first engaging in conversations with Pride organizers.

“I just interpreted that companies are making decisions that at this time it’s not good to be sponsoring Pride,” Ford said. “I think in this political environment that they thought that was a risky decision. But that’s just me reading the tea leaves. I think for a long-term sponsor not to sponsor us, they are responding to what we are.”

Anheuser-Busch came under fire from conservatives in 2023 after Mulvaney posted a 50-second Instagram video on April 1 in which she revealed a custom Bud Light can with her face on it. Over the next month, conservatives posted videos as they dumped out Bud Light cans and shot up cases of Bud Light with semiautomatic rifles. Elected Republicans baselessly claimed that Mulvaney was a child predator and that the global balance of power would be upset by her Instagram video. Others said that they were boycotting Bud Light, often switching to other LGBTQ+-friendly brands.

Mulvaney said Anheuser-Busch never reached out to her to offer any sort of support or public pushback against the backlash she faced. Online commenters noted that the company donates big bucks to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians. In response, several LGBTQ+ bars stopped serving Bud Light, Colorado’s gay Gov. Jared Polis (D) announced his lifelong boycott of the brand, and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) kicked Anheuser-Busch off the top of its corporate equality index (CEI), a measure of various companies’ LGBTQ+-inclusive workplace practices. Two of the marketing executives who worked on the Mulvaney partnership were put on leave, and right-wingers claimed victory as the company’s CEO promised never to speak out again on “controversial” issues.

Earlier this month, Ford announced that San Francisco Pride would no longer partner with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, after the company rolled back its content moderation and ended its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Ford said her group would pause relationships with companies whose values no longer align with San Francisco Pride’s.

Ford said her group has “no choice” but to hold the event, regardless of the lost funding.

“There are too many people depending on us. We will find a way to find the funds,” she said. Pride organizers are actively fundraising door-to-door, encouraging locals to donate, and asking supporters to purchase tickets to the nonprofit’s City Hall party and Pride Parade grandstand seating. She hopes this year’s event will be its largest and that wealthy donors can help the event achieve that goal.

“I want to say to everyone, if you’re feeling helpless and that you have not had a way to stand up to what’s happening to the LGBTQ community right now, here’s your chance,” Ford said.

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