Can you tell me what they do that is illegal? I'm genuinely interested.
One article i seen on one of there illegal practices talked about a Rep that went into a bar, noticed that the bar had a craft brew on tap and proceeded to tell the bar owner that unless they removed the craft brew, they would not longer get ANY AB products. Apparently they considered that blackmail, which is illegal.
Also, the way the tier system is set up was SUPPOSE to be to protect the all the brewers, But the way it worked out, is that since Inbev makes so much money, they pretty much TELL the distributor what beers they can and cant carry, Or they flood the distributor with so much of their product that there isn't room in the warehouse for craft brews.
The AB reps tell the stores HOW and WHERE their beer AND their competitors beers are to be displayed, Pushing craft brews out of sight, and making sure that their beers are in all the PRIME display locations. This should be the STORES choice on Beer placement, NOT a Brewery Reps choice.
Shortly after Moonshot came out, which was the first Beer on the market with Caffeine in it, AB also produced a beer with Caffeine, and went about getting THEIR posters put up and Moonshots posters taken down.
They Sued Dogfish head, because of the name of Punkin ale, who btw was making that beer BEFORE AB decided to market a pumpkin beer.
Are all of these Illegal? No they are not. But are they very Shady and unethical Business practices? Yes, yes they are.
Why do they do this? Because they know that they cannot produce a product that is Superior to the craft brewers, So they use any means at their disposal to try to Impede the sale of QUALITY craft brew,Try their best to make it so their beer is the ONLY choice, and yes buy off politicians to vote they way they want on beer related laws.
If inbev produced a Product that was of Equal Quality or better quality, Using the Equal Quality Or better quality ingredients, and followed ethical business practices in the marketing of their beer you would not hear a word from me about it.But Hell Most of the BMC beers are not even made with real hops, they are made with a liquid hop extract of Iso-alpha acids. That isn't quality, and doesn't produce the same taste that real hops do.
But i can say this, I dont like light colored beers personally, but their ARE much higher quality Light colored beers out there, Many of the German Light beers blow any AB product out of the water as far as quality, and they do so without the unethically business practices.