As you’ve no doubt heard, the booze business is not in terrific shape at the moment. Will sales benefit from the industry’s biggest brands sponsoring an obscene circus punctuated by gutter bigotry to celebrate a failed presidency? Seems unlikely! But thanks to the clutch of big-time beverage-alcohol firms that paid through the nose for the privilege of funding the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s weird birthday gladiator showcase for President Donald Trump this past weekend, I guess we’ll all get to find out together!

The Sunday evening bacchanal, telecast live on Paramount+ (owned by the MAGA-aligned Ellison media oligarchy, naturally) was underwritten by endorsement deals from the following beverage companies:

I assembled this list based on reporting from Sludge and NBC News, plus social-media posts from the event and clips that media watchdogs captured from the telecast.

None of the firms above—some of which have published “corporate values” (lol) that pay lip service to concepts of “respect” and “accountability”—responded to a request for comment for this piece. If you work at any of these companies and would like to share your perspective on their silence (or anything else) I’d love to hear from you! Anonymity available.

It’s been an especially ugly seven-day stretch for ABI, even by the low standards the country’s biggest brewer has set for its own leadership of the industry (lmao). Last Friday, I filed a column at VinePair highlighting ABI’s cowardly silence on the AI slop video that UFC fighter Sean Strickland posted of himself brutally beating a woman that resembled trans actress Dylan Mulvaney. “Ive yet to see one rainbow flag. We’re back!!! 🇺🇸 🇺🇲 @budlight,” Strickland, a vile troll who makes the promotion’s chief executive, Dana White, seem almost mature by comparison, wrote in his Instagram caption. In response to multiple requests for comment, ABI said nothing.

This was always what ABI was buying when it chose to ink a $100-million Bud Light endorsement contract with the UFC in October 2023, when the promotion’s sleazy chuddishness was already very much a) known and b) part of its appeal to the macrobrewer. But it and its fellow Big Booze backers may have gotten more bigotry than they bargained for on Sunday night.