Anheuser-Busch is the biggest advertiser in the 2026 Super Bowl, with 2.5 minutes of ads across three brands, two of them light beers: Michelob Ultra and the ever-present Bud Light.
Maybe it’s a stretch to call light beer part of America’s health movement, which is reflected in the ranks of wellness-focused advertisers in this year’s game. But with its lower carb and calorie counts, that’s how many perceive it. It’s also how it got started.
In 1951, biochemist Joseph Owades took a job with the Rheingold brewery in Brooklyn. In the lab, Owades hit on an enzyme called amyloglucosidase, which allowed yeast to consume the starches that cause bloating. The lower-calorie result was a “diet beer” called Gablinger’s. It hit the market in 1967, and promptly flopped.
But with Baby Boomers taking an interest in healthier eating, another brewer—Meister Brau—decided to revive the diet beer category. Borrowing Owades’ formula, it rolled out Meister Brau Lite. The can of this “non-filling premium beer” boasted “one-third less calories” than the usual Meister Brau. Drinkers didn’t notice.
As things turned out, the concept wasn’t lacking—the marketing was. Or so thought the Miller Brewing Company, which bought Meister Brau out of bankruptcy in 1972, nabbed the light-beer formula in the process, then hired McCann Erickson for the national rollout of Miller Lite in 1975.
Beer drinkers tried Miller Lite and liked it. So much that, by 1979, Miller dug deep in its pockets to pay for an ad in the Super Bowl. McCann knew who it was targeting (regular guys) and it knew how to reach them (don’t talk about dieting).
In the 30-second Big Game commercial, three retired NFL quarterbacks—the Steelers’ Terry Hanratty, the Cardinals’ Charley Johnson, and Norm Snead of the Eagles—sat at a table in a bar. Their bro banter hit all of Miller Lite’s selling points: It had “a third less calories than a regular beer,” it was “less filling” and it still “tastes great.” The tagline—“Everything you always wanted in a beer. And less.”—would become one of the most famous in history.
Miller Lite all but created a new segment, one soon flooded by the likes of Coors Light (1978), Bud Light (1982), and Corona Light (1989). In fact, it took Bud Light less than two decades to become America’s best-selling beer by volume in 2001, a title it held until 2023. As of September 2025, that distinction is back in the hands of Anheuser-Busch, held this time by Michelob Ultra.
And while beer’s popularity has slipped as millennials have drifted to hard seltzers—and Gen Z into abstinence—Super Bowl ads for light beers are still a sure bet. A few are even memorable, like the 1995 Bud Light ad in which a dork at a party says “I love you man!” to Charlton Heston, and Michelob Ultra’s 2023 sendup of Caddyshack starring Serena Williams.
