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Parler accuses Amazon of breaking antitrust regulation in suspending internet hosting providers.

Parler accuses Amazon of breaking antitrust law in suspending hosting services.

Hours after going offline on Monday, social media start-up Parler filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing Amazon of antitrust violations and calling for an injunction to prevent that the tech giant is blocking access to cloud computing services.

Amazon told Parler over the weekend that the service would be discontinued because “a steady increase in violent content” on the site indicated the company did not have a reliable process to prevent it from violating Amazon’s Terms of Service. Amazon said it would make sure Parler’s data is preserved so it can be migrated to a new hosting provider.

Millions of people turned to Parler after Twitter and Facebook banned President Trump following the Capitol uprising last week. Apple and Google kicked Parler out of their app stores later this week, although users who had already downloaded the app could still use it. However, the app relied on Amazon’s cloud computing technology.

Parler’s complaint was dated Sunday before Amazon suspended Parler. However, the lawsuit wasn’t filed with the court until Monday.

In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western Washington District, Parler accused Amazon of terminating, rather than just banning, its account – and said it should have been given 30 days notice. It has also been argued that Amazon violated antitrust laws by teaming up with Twitter, a large Amazon customer, to start Parler just as it was gaining broader appeal. It said it had 12 million users and “expects millions more this week given the growth in recent days.”

Parler did not provide direct evidence that Amazon and Twitter coordinated the response. Instead, it cited a December press release announcing a multi-year strategic partnership between Amazon and Twitter, and cited Twitter’s own challenges in monitoring the content.

Parler said losing Amazon’s services would be a “death knell,” although other platforms popular with far-right and conspiracy theorists, such as Gab and 8chan, have managed to bounce back after being canceled by hosting providers.

David J. Groesbeck, a sole intellectual property attorney based in Olympia, Washington, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Parler. Amazon didn’t respond to an instant request for comment.

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World Well being Group holds press briefing as international locations face Covid mutations

World Health Organization holds press briefing as countries face Covid mutations

[The stream is slated to start at 12:00 p.m. ET. Please refresh the page if you do not see a player above at that time.]

World Health Organization officials hold a press conference on the coronavirus pandemic on Monday as more countries report cases of contagious new mutations of the virus.

The Japanese National Institute of Infectious Diseases found a new variant of the coronavirus in four passengers from Brazil on Sunday. The institute said the new strain appears to have some of the same properties, such as increased infectivity, as other variations discovered in the UK and South Africa.

The United States has now found at least 63 Covid-19 cases with the new, contagious strain of the virus, first identified in the UK and known as B.1.1.7, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. The variant doesn’t appear to make patients sick or increase their risk of death, health officials have said.

The coronavirus has infected more than 90.4 million people worldwide and killed at least 1.9 million people, according to Johns Hopkins University.

– CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report.

Read CNBC’s live updates for the latest news on the Covid-19 outbreak.

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Banks Halt Political Donations After Professional-Trump Mob Storms Capitol: Reside Updates

JPMorgan Chase is halting all political donations from its PAC for six months.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

Big businesses often donate to both political parties and say that their support is tied to narrow issues of specific interest to their industries. That became increasingly fraught last week, after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and some Republican lawmakers tried to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s win in the presidential election.

A flurry of companies have since reviewed political giving via their corporate political action committees, according to the DealBook newsletter.

Some big banks are pausing all political donations:

  • Goldman Sachs is freezing donations through its PAC and will conduct “a thorough assessment of how people acted during this period,” a spokesman, Jake Siewert, told DealBook.

  • JPMorgan Chase is halting donations through its PAC for six months. “There will be plenty of time for campaigning later,” said Peter Scher, the bank’s head of corporate responsibility.

  • Citigroup is postponing all campaign contributions for a quarter. “We want you to be assured that we will not support candidates who do not respect the rule of law,” Candi Wolff, the bank’s head of government affairs, wrote in an internal memo.

Other banks, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo, said they would review their corporate contribution strategy.

Some companies are pausing donations to specific politicians. Marriott said it would pause donations from its PAC “to those who voted against certification of the election,” a spokeswoman told DealBook. She did not say how long the break would last or how the bank would decide when to resume.

Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boston Scientific and Commerce Bancshares are taking a similar, targeted approach to donation freezes. The newsletter Popular Information is tracking the responses of these and other companies that donated to lawmakers who challenged the election result.

The suspensions coincide with the first quarter after a presidential election, which is typically light on fund-raising anyway. Efforts by some companies to pause PAC donations to all lawmakers — those who voted to uphold the election as well as those who sought to overturn it — are raising eyebrows. And companies can still give to “dark money” groups that don’t disclose their donors but often raise far more money than corporate PACs.

In other fallout, the P.G.A. of America said it would no longer hold its signature championship at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.; the social app Parler, popular among conservatives as an alternative to Twitter, went dark this morning after Amazon cut it off from computing services; the payment processor Stripe banned the Trump campaign from using its services; YouTube blocked Steve Bannon’s podcast channel; and the debate continues over tech giants’ influence over public speech.

Banks are expecting heavy demand for the new round of loans, as the virus continues to surge and restrictions on activity are reintroduced.Credit…Mohamed Sadek for The New York Times

The Paycheck Protection Program reopens this week, and underserved borrowers — including women-led businesses and those run by Black, Latino and Asian owners and other minorities — will be first in line to tap the new funds, The New York Times’s Stacy Cowley reports.

Starting Monday, a group of specially designated institutions known as community lenders, which specialize in working with Black- and minority-owned small businesses, will begin accepting applications for new loans. The government said larger financial institutions and banks would begin processing loans “shortly.”

Giving community lenders a head start is intended to address complaints that the aid was not distributed equitably the last time around. Here are more details about the new program.

  • Borrowers were previously limited to just one loan, but the new funding will be available to both first-time and returning borrowers. Businesses will be eligible for a second loan if they suffered a sales drop of 25 percent or more in at least one quarter of 2020, compared with the previous year.

  • Second loans will be restricted to businesses with no more than 300 employees; initial loans are available to larger companies, generally those with up to 500 workers.

  • The Small Business Administration, which manages the program, said it would begin accepting applications on Monday from community lenders seeking loans for first-time borrowers. On Wednesday, those lenders will be able to submit applications from people seeking second-round loans.

  • The S.B.A. will no longer approve loan applications instantaneously, a move that previously allowed some borrowers to receive their loan funds just hours after they applied. Now approvals will generally take at least one day.

Twitter locked President Trump’s account on Friday after he posted tweets calling his supporters “patriots” and saying he would not attend the presidential inauguration.Credit…Twitter

In the hours and days after a mob of President Trump’s loyalists stormed the Capitol, the nation’s biggest tech companies began to shut down accounts that helped incite the rampage. In the days and weeks before the attack, President Trump had used his Twitter feed and Facebook page to spread the lie that he had won the November election. It was that falsehood that helped drive the mob from to the Capitol last Wednesday after a speech by the president.

Facebook said the risks were too great to allow the president’s posts. Twitter followed suit. The focus shifted to Parler, a favorite app for right-wing figures. Citing posts on Parler that encouraged violence and crime, Apple and Google removed the app from their app stores. Then Amazon told Parler it would stop hosting it.

For Big Tech, the events of the past week raised tricky questions about politics, free speech and radicalization of people online.

How Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free Speech

The app has renewed a debate about who holds power over online speech after the tech giants yanked their support for it and left it fighting for survival. Parler was set to go dark on Monday.

Stripped of Twitter, Trump Faces a New Challenge: How to Command Attention

The president became a celebrity through television, but Twitter had given him a singular outlet for expressing himself as he is, unfiltered by the norms of the office.

Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler, an App That Drew Trump Supporters

The companies pulled support for the “free speech” social network, all but killing the service just as many conservatives are seeking alternatives to Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter Permanently Bans Trump, Capping Online Revolt

The president’s preferred megaphone cited “the risk of further incitement of violence.” It acted after Facebook, Snapchat, Twitch and other platforms placed limits on him.

Facebook Bars Trump Through End of His Term

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said the risks of Mr. Trump using the service were too great, even as Twitter lifted its lock on the president’s account.

In Pulling Trump’s Megaphone, Twitter Shows Where Power Now Lies

The ability of a handful of people to control our public discourse has never been more obvious, our columnist writes.

World Wrestling Entertainment event in Riyadh in 2019. George Barrios and Michelle Wilson, who spent more than a decade at WWE, announced the formation of a new investment firm.Credit…Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

George Barrios and Michelle Wilson — the former co-presidents of World Wrestling Entertainment who abruptly left the company a year ago — are announcing a new project: Isos Capital Management, an investment firm focused on media, entertainment and sports. The DealBook newsletter was the first to report the new venture.

Mr. Barrios and Ms. Wilson are veterans of the sports and entertainment business, including more than a decade at WWE. “We feel really proud of everything that was accomplished during our tenure, so we’re excited about the next chapter with Isos,” Ms. Wilson said. After WWE, they both considered several opportunities — including chief executive roles — but decided instead to continue working together.

The new fund will look at companies at all stages of development, with a focus on new technologies that keep fans and subscribers engaged. “There are spaces — whether it’s video gaming, e-sports, sports betting — that will drive fan engagement, and that digital transformation will really become the vehicle to make that happen,” Ms. Wilson said. She and Mr. Barrios declined to comment on other details about the fund.

As money has poured into the industry and deal-making has picked up, the fund’s founders believe their experience and contacts set them apart; at WWE, they led the company’s aggressive international push and signed content deals with USA Network and Fox Sports, among others. The company’s media division has helped counteract declining performance in its live performance unit in recent years.

“Capital is important, but it’s fungible,” Mr. Barrios said. “What Michelle and I bring is expertise, credibility and a global network.”

  • Stocks on Wall Street and in Europe fell on Monday, a day of consolidation after the markets began the year with a rally to record highs.

  • The S&P 500 fell more than half a percent in early trading, while the Stoxx Europe 600 index dipped by percent and the FTSE 100 in Britain by 0.5 percent.

  • Twitter tumbled more than 11 percent, after the social media company on Friday permanently banned President Trump, who had more than 88 million followers, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.”

  • Boeing fell close to 3 percent following Saturday’s crash in Indonesia of a 737-500 series passenger carrying 62 people. The Sriwijaya Air flight fell into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff from Jakarta.

  • Last week, U.S. stock markets pushed higher after Democrats won two Senate seats in Georgia, clinching control of the upper house of Congress, increasing investors’ expectations of more fiscal spending. The markets continued rising even after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Wednesday. Democrats, pointing to Mr. Trump’s inciting of the mob, have taken steps to remove Mr. Trump from the presidency.

  • Bitcoin fell to about $35,000 on Monday, down 17 percent from a record high of $41,962 reached on Friday. The cryptocurrency has surged substantially in recent weeks; just a month ago its price was below $20,000.

  • “Bitcoin’s parabolic rise is unsustainable in the near term,” Scott Minerd, the global chief investment Officer of Guggenheim Partners, an investment company, wrote on Twitter. “Vulnerable to a setback. The target technical upside of $35,000 has been exceeded. Time to take some money off the table.”

Nothing has stopped the stock market’s momentum over the last year: not the pandemic, not record unemployment and not the Capitol riot.

But don’t take that as a sign that the market is envisioning a calm and prosperous six months ahead, writes The New York Times’s Jeff Sommer. Instead, the rally simply reflects the greed of bullish investors. Here’s what’s fueling the high hopes:

  • Interest rates remain extraordinarily low, and the Federal Reserve and other central banks have said they are determined to keep short-term rates low. When rates are low, stocks and other risky assets are comparatively attractive.

  • The pandemic is the main cause of global economic troubles and it will eventually end. With vaccinations underway, Wall Street hopes that growth in most regions and sectors will surge later this year, along with rising corporate profits.

  • With Democrats sweeping the two contested Senate seats in Georgia, the chances of at least some further economic stimulus have increased. President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. will most likely be able to deliver more aid to people in need and to local governments, which is expected to increase economic growth.

  • Truly sweeping legislative changes will be difficult, if not impossible, given the Democratic Party’s razor-thin margin in the Senate and reduced majority in the House. Some increased spending is likely, but this slim grip on power implies that big tax increases on wealthy investors and rich corporations may not happen soon.

  • The election may have delivered something close to a Goldilocks alignment for the stock market. Mr. Biden’s cabinet picks so far suggest that he will govern as a centrist, and the market historically has fared well under Democratic presidents who do not have sweeping control of Congress. The possibility that the Biden administration will usher in a more efficient and inclusive government, with more spending and only moderate changes otherwise, is seen as a sweet outcome for stocks.

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Lululemon sees earnings at prime finish of outlook because of holidays

Lululemon sees earnings at top end of outlook thanks to holidays

Pedestrians seen walking past the Canadian sportswear retailer Lululemon in Shanghai.

Alex Tai | SOPA pictures | LightRocket | Getty Images

Lululemon said Monday that fourth quarter earnings and sales will now be at the high end of the previous outlook thanks to the strong performance during the vacation.

Ahead of virtual meetings with analysts and investors this week at the annual ICR conference, the company called for adjusted earnings per share growth at the high end of its previously announced mid-single-digit growth expectations. Net sales for the quarter ended Jan. 31 are expected to grow at the high end of its expectations for medium to high teens, it said in a statement.

Lululemon stock was down more than 2% on the Monday before trading. The stock is up more than 54% in the past 12 months.

“We are pleased with the momentum during the vacation because our investments in Lululemon and Mirror have enabled us to connect with guests both physically and digitally,” said CEO Calvin McDonald in a statement.

In December, Lululemon posted third-quarter sales of $ 1.1 billion, up 22% year over year.

Lululemon has not given an outlook for the full year due to the ongoing effects of the Covid pandemic.

Read the full version of Lululemon.

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How Excessive-Finish Eating places Have Failed Black Feminine Cooks

How High-End Restaurants Have Failed Black Female Chefs

In response, the company announced that its senior management team had been working with an inclusion expert, Dr. James Pogue, collaborates on anti-bias training. The company has vowed to “keep diversity and inclusion in mind,” a spokeswoman said, and “create safe forums for everyone at USHG to have awkward, challenging conversations about race and bias”. (This reporter’s husband has worked for the restaurant group in the past.)

Ms. Ettarh said such discussions are as important as recruiting more black workers. “I think the white leadership is so concerned about hiring black people, but they have to change the culture,” she said.

Facing the past should be part of the process for restaurants in general, she said. “They are not quoted as being transparent about what they want to do to get better, but they are not transparent about how they have let down all the blacks who have worked for them,” she said. “I generally think that good food doesn’t support its workers well.”

Some women don’t wait for the industry to change.

Catina Smith, the founder of Just Call Me Chef, a biennial national organization for black women in the hospitality industry, has members in 10 cities and hosts in-person events in addition to an online community that connects women from around the world.

Ms. Smith, 34, a line chef in Baltimore who now works there as a private chef and cooking teacher, said she started the group after suffering from the shortage of black cooks in the kitchens she worked in. “My last kitchen job was all white men and nothing felt like it was really for us,” she said.

Ms. Smith plans to hold the group’s first conference in Baltimore next June to unite black women in hospitality. The goal is not to focus on what they have been denied, but rather to celebrate their skills and talents and provide mentoring to young chefs.

“We don’t cry because we can’t get into these rooms, we just say how it is for us,” she said. “We don’t want any special treatment. We just want the opportunity. “

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Rollout may dent Macron’s re-election probabilities

Rollout could dent Macron’s re-election chances

French President Emmanuel Macron.

LOIC VENANCE | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – France is currently lagging far behind other European countries with its introduction of Covid-19 vaccines, potentially affecting President Emmanuel Macron’s chances of re-election.

By Friday, 80,000 French citizens had been vaccinated against the corona virus. In comparison, neighboring Germany has carried out hundreds of thousands of vaccinations.

Success or failure in vaccinating the population is likely to shape the political debate as the campaign for the 2022 presidential race intensifies in the coming months.

“Although the 2022 presidential election seems a long way off, President Macron is certainly concerned that a poorly implemented vaccine roll-out could affect his chances for another term,” Jessica Hinds, a European economist with Capital Economics, told CNBC on Thursday .

Macron was neck to neck with far-right leader Marine Le Pen in an opinion poll published in October.

The French president has reportedly complained that the pace of vaccinations is “not worthy of the moment or the French people” and said the situation needs to change “quickly and in particular,” Le Journal du Dimanche reported earlier this month. The president’s office was not immediately available for comment when CNBC contacted him on Monday.

“A slow rate of vaccination would limit the government’s ability to lift restrictions that weigh on the economy and people’s daily lives. This would be clearly unpopular among (French) voters, especially if other countries like Germany are able to remove them sooner “said Hinds.

Bureaucracy was the main reason for the delays. Citizens had to seek advice and consent from their doctor before vaccination before vaccination.

“What I notice about the French strategy is that officials haven’t paid much attention to logistics,” Jeremy Ghez, a professor at HEC Paris Business School, told CNBC via email.

Reports from the country also suggest that the population has a high anti-vaccine sentiment compared to other countries.

French Health Minister Olivier Veran initially suggested that careful distribution should take into account concerns about the vaccine among the population. An Ipsos poll published in late December found that only 40% of French people had plans to get the coronavirus vaccine.

But the French government now wants to reverse the situation by simplifying the process. France’s Veran said that people aged 75 and over can make an appointment online or by phone to get vaccinated.

The country is also expanding the eligibility criteria and the government has vowed that 1 million people will be vaccinated before the end of the month.

France was one of the nations hardest hit by the pandemic. Prime Minister Jean Castex said Thursday that restaurants and ski resorts will be closed at least until mid-February and the night curfew will be extended until the end of January.

The social restrictions weigh on the economy. French GDP is likely to have contracted by more than 9% in 2020.

The slower the vaccine adoption, the longer parts of the economy will remain closed.

“The French economy is under anesthesia and only when you pull the plug will you really know how quickly economic players can recover. If this happens quickly, I like Macron’s chances because there are so few alternatives to this day. If not “I would argue that all bets are void,” said Ghez of how economic performance will affect the presidential election.

Macron defeated Le Pen in 2017 on a pro-EU agenda.

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Hong Kong Web site Doxxing Police Will get Blocked, Elevating Censorship Fears

Hong Kong Website Doxxing Police Gets Blocked, Raising Censorship Fears

With an Internet provider, China Mobile Hong Kong, the separation – a kind of drop action – indicates a direct involvement of the telecommunications company. “A drop action is a specially configured element of a DNS firewall environment,” April said. “This is not something that the owner could have intentionally or accidentally configured.”

China Mobile Hong Kong, a branch of China Mobile, the state-owned Chinese company, declined to comment. Two other companies tested by The Times, SmarTone and Hutchison Telecommunications, which are controlled by local conglomerates, did not respond to requests for comment sent via email.

Users from PCCW, another local operator, told The Times that their access to the site was also blocked. A spokesman declined to comment.

While site blocking may at first glance be similar to mainland China censorship, the methods are very different from China’s sophisticated system.

At China Mobile, SmarTone and Hutchison, the process of associating a website address with the series of numbers a computer uses to look up has been interrupted. The practice would be like listing an incorrect number under someone’s name in a phone book. If you know the correct number for that person, you can still call them.

On the Chinese mainland, on the other hand, the hardware of the Great Firewall – as Beijing’s system of filters and blocks is known – actively separates connections. In the phonebook comparison, the call would not be forwarded even if you had the correct phone number.

The blockades in Hong Kong are “very easy to bypass and clumsy,” said Professor Tsui. Still, he said, authorities may not want to control the internet as tightly as Beijing for fear of deterring the global banks and international corporations that have made the city their Asian headquarters.

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How Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Followers, Grew to become a Take a look at of Free Speech

How Parler, a Chosen App of Trump Fans, Became a Test of Free Speech

Parler slowly grew until early 2020 when Twitter began labeling Mr. Trump’s tweets as inaccurate and some of his supporters joined Parler in protest. Parler grew even faster after the November election when Facebook and Twitter made false claims that the vote had been rigged. So many users signed up that they intermittently overloaded the company’s systems, forcing it to stop new registrations.

Overall, users downloaded the Parler app more than 10 million times in the past year, 80 percent in the US, according to Sensor Tower, the app data company.

Last Wednesday, Mr Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol to pressure lawmakers to overturn his loss of the election, which resulted in a rampage that killed five people. The rally was planned on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. At Parler, people gave advice on which streets to take to avoid the police. Some reported carrying weapons in the Capitol.

In an interview with the New York Times, hours after the mob stormed the Capitol, Mr. Matze said, “I don’t feel responsible for any of this, and neither does the platform, considering that we’re a neutral city square where only the law is held. “

On Friday, however, Apple and Google Parler announced that posts that encourage violence would need to be removed more consistently. By Saturday, Apple and Google had removed Parler from their app stores and restricted the ability to reach new users on virtually all smartphones in the world.

“There is no place for threats of violence or illegal activities on our platform,” Apple said in a statement. Google said, “We require apps to implement robust moderation for massive content.”

Late on Saturday, Amazon announced to Parler that it needed to find a new place to host its website. Amazon said it sent Parler 98 examples of posts on its website encouraging violence, but many stayed online.

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We Labored Collectively on the Web. Final Week, He Stormed the Capitol.

We Worked Together on the Internet. Last Week, He Stormed the Capitol.

“Platform metrics guided his politics,” reflected Andrew Gauthier, who was a top video producer for BuzzFeed and who later worked on Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential campaign. “You always think that evil will come from the evil movie villain, and then you are like – oh no, evil can just start with bad jokes and nihilistic behavior fueled by positive reinforcement on different platforms.”

And so Mr. Gionet’s story is not exactly the familiar one of a lonely young man in his bedroom who falls into a rabbit hole full of videos that poison his worldview. It is the story of a man who is rewarded for being a violent white nationalist and for getting the attention and reassurance that he is apparently desperate for.

We spent a lot of time at BuzzFeed thinking about how we could optimize our content for an online audience. he optimized himself.

When he was arrested last month in Scottsdale, Arizona for spraying maces in the eyes of a bouncer, an official reported that Mr. Gionet “informed me that he was an” influencer “and had a large following in the social Media added “to a police report. He was released at his own discretion, a Scottsdale police spokesman said, pending trial. Even so, he shouted “ACAF” in the Capitol – all cops are friends (although the original meaning of the acronym is less friendly).

Because of its story, I wonder what guilt those of us who pioneered the use of social media to deliver information deserve right now. Did we work with the makers of these platforms to help open Pandora’s box?

I didn’t work with Mr. Gionet directly. But in 2012, I hired a writer named Benny Johnson who cultivated a voice that combined social media expertise and right-wing politics. I mistakenly viewed his policies at the time as just conservative. And I imagined it would thrive, as conservative writers have done for generations in mainstream newsrooms, sharing their peers’ interest in finding common facts.

I slowly realized that his interests were not journalistic or even ideological, but aesthetic, enthusiastic about the images of raw power. In the tradition of authoritarian propagandists, he was impressed by neoclassical buildings, weapons, and later by Donald Trump’s crowds. And after we fired him for plagiarism in 2014, he ran the content arm of Mr. Trump’s youth wing Turning Point USA and hosted a show on Newsmax. Last week he was cheerleading attempt to overthrow the election (although he backed off when the violence started and later blamed leftists for it). He’s also selling his “viral political storytelling” skills, which we worked on at BuzzFeed, to a generation of new right-wing figures like Rep Lauren Boebert, who drew attention for vowing to put her gun to work in the Bring Congress. (Neither Mr. Gionet nor Mr. Johnson responded to email inquiries.)

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Bud Mild to launch arduous seltzer lemonade as new rivals enter market

Bud Light to launch hard seltzer lemonade as new rivals enter market

All four flavors of Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade

Bud Light

Bud Light is launching a range of Hard Seltzer sodas to make a solid claim on the increasingly competitive category.

The Anheuser-Busch InBev brand entered the market for hard seltzer a year ago as part of a broader push by the parent company. Anheuser-Busch InBev also owns the seltzer maker Bon & Viv. As beer consumption has declined in recent years, brewers have turned to the hard seltzer to increase sales.

In the 52 weeks ending December 26, retail sales of selters rose 160% to $ 4.1 billion, according to Nielsen data. The trend started with the popularity of White Claw, owned by Mike’s Hard Lemonade brewer Mark Anthony Brands, but newcomers have boosted sales even further. Coca-Cola is entering the fray this year with Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, its first alcoholic beverage in the US since 1983, through a partnership with Molson Coors Beverage.

According to Euromonitor International, White Claw still holds more than half of the market share for hard seltzer through 2019. Truly Spiked & Sparkling, owned by Boston Beer, ranks second with a 28% share. At almost 10%, Bon & Viv is a distant third.

According to Bud Light, the success of its seltzer helped the beer brand gain more market share in 2020 than it has over the past five years. Its strong performance coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, which led more consumers to drink alcohol at home rather than in bars. AB InBev’s shares, valued at $ 122 billion, fell 13% last year after falling 8.2% in volume in the first nine months of last year.

“When we looked at the different types of seltzer, we tried to differentiate a segment of seltzer,” said Andy Goeler, vice president of marketing at Bud Light.

The seltzer was first launched with mainstream flavors like strawberry and black cherry, but Bud Light launched a special “ugly sweater” package with seasonal flavors for eight weeks over the holidays. The thematic beverage pack is sold out, said Goeler.

For his next seltzer innovation, Bud Light landed on lemonade, which has great appeal. According to Nielsen data, hard seltzer lemonade retailed just $ 313.97 million in the 52 weeks ended December 26. However, thanks to early entrants such as Truly’s version, the segment is growing much faster than that of hard seltzer. Nielsen data found that retail sales during this period were more than nine times higher than last year.

Bud Light tries to beat the competition by improving the taste. The brand ran blind taste tests for consumers and tweaked the recipe until Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade beat the competition every time.

“This one will have a much bolder lemonade taste,” said Goeler. “Again, we want to make sure we get the best lemonade.”

However, the nutritional profile of Seltzer lemonade is still in line with what consumers are looking for at Seltzer, which is widely considered a healthier alcoholic beverage compared to beer. It’s 100 calories and contains less than 1 gram of sugar.

After more than six months of development, the drink will hit shelves on January 18th. The 12-ounce cans will be available in packs of 12 with all four flavors: original lemonade, peach lemonade, black cherry lemonade, and strawberry lemonade.

While lemonade is usually thought of as a summer drink, Bud Light is confident of bringing the new drink to market in the dead of winter.

“The advantage of the release is that there is enough time to bring the product to market before spring begins,” said Goeler. “Things will pick up in the summer as with all beer sales and Selters is starting to follow that year-round demand.”

Promotion of the drink begins with commercials that air during the NFL playoffs, which begin Saturday. The ads play with the idea that grandma’s lemonade tastes best. Actors say the hard seltzer tastes better, leading to retribution from grandmothers.