The King of Beers’ empire is expanding beyond the realm of hops and barley as Budweiser on Monday became the latest brand to enter the non-fungible token business, creating 1,936 one-of-a-kind pieces of digital art in the form of beer cans that were retailing for hundreds of dollars each.
Bud’s “Heritage Collection” sold out less than an hour after its release at 1 p.m. ET, netting the brand roughly $984,000—a healthy profit that comes near the tail end of a year that has seen dozens of brands clamor to cash in on the digital art craze, with each so-called “NFT drop” yielding an opportunity to bring in heaps of cash.
Symbolic of 1936, the year Budweiser’s first cans were created, the Anheuser-Busch InBev brand’s inaugural NFT launch consists of two different types of blockchain-based tokens: There are 1,900 “Core Heritage Cans,” priced at $499 each, as well as a much more limited run of 36 “Gold Heritage Cans,” going for $999 each.
“The Budweiser ‘Heritage Collection’ is designed to celebrate the brand’s iconic history while also moving Budweiser into the metaverse,” said Spencer Gordon, Anheuser-Busch’s VP of digital and Draftline, the brewer’s in-house creative agency. “The launch of this NFT collection is yet another example of our innovative and consumer-first approach to further strengthen our iconic brands,” he said.
Budweiser’s proprietary NFT debut is the first such venture from any AB InBev-owned brand.
