Zero-Sum Game For Budweiser

Anheuser-Busch wanted to become the life of the party. Instead, by trying to commercialize the drinking game known as beer pong, it became this fall’s major party pooper.

“Just how stupid does Anheuser-Busch think we are? Pretty stupid, it seems,” one blogger wrote after the brewer claimed that Bud Pong—A-B’s version of beer pong —was meant to be played with water, not beer. That patently absurd claim, intended to shield A-B from charges that it was promoting binge drinking, left the brewer in a no-man’s land: accused by beer-pong opponents of being disingenuous and by beer-pong fans of being a big wuss.