Budweiser is now the lone major sponsor left for this summer’s Wireless Festival in London.
Rockstar energy drink has joined Pepsi, Diageo (Johnnie Walker, Captain Morgan), and PayPal in exiting over the planned three days of shows by Kanye West.
The festival has not acknowledged any of this, keeping the names of the brands on the site. But they are gone.
I first cited the brands on March 31st, especially Pepsi. It took them a few days to acknowledge their mistake — not because of us, but because the UK government said forget it. They didn’t want the Nazi spewing antisemite to perform in their country.
Kanye was dropped by all his own major sponsors and business affiliates including The Gap, Adidas, and Balenciaga two years ago or more over the same reasoning.
Nevertheless, the rapper doubled down, selling t shirts with swastikas.
Somehow, Kanye — who calls himself Ye — convinced SoFi Stadium to stage two shows there last week. He thought he’d scored his Renaissance. But the first show was a bust, held on the first night of Passover — so much for being apologetic about antisemitism.
The second show did fill up — but attracted skinheads.
Kanye’s album, “Bully,” sold 145,000 copies last week and came in at number 2.
“Bully” comes from Gamma Records, which is owned in large part by Eldridge Industies’ Todd Boehly — who also owns The Hollywood Reporter, Dick Clark Productions, and the LA Dodgers.
Gamma has had several failures already with Mariah Carey, Snoop Dogg, Usher and other acts. This debacle could put an end to the company’s president, Larry Jackson. I’m hearing others in the record business are very angry with him.
Now we wait for word from Budweiser, and also from the Festival which must remove Pepsi’s name from their website — and all the other sponsors.
