No, Pabst did not give Kid Rock $1 billion deal; claim is 'stolen satire' | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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Singer Kid Rock performs a concert before the Daytona 500 auto race in Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2015.
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The claim: Kid Rock signed $1 billion deal with Pabst beer

A Jan. 27 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows side-by-side photos of singer Kid Rock and three cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

“Kid Rock Signs A Billion Dollar Exclusive Deal With PABST, Ditches Woke Bud Light,” reads the text in the image.

The post was shared more than 100 times in three days.

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Our rating: False

There is no credible evidence that the Pabst Brewing Company extended such an offer. The claim originated on a satirical website, and its publisher confirmed the story is not real, but the Facebook post gives no indication that it is satire.

Claim originated from ‘network of satire and parody’

Kid Rock made headlines in April 2023 when he and other conservative figures publicly denounced Anheuser-Busch after the company partnered with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote Bud Light. He later recorded a video of himself shooting several cases of Bud Light and cursing at the company.

But the claim that the musician struck a billion-dollar deal with a different brewer, Pabst Blue Ribbon, is false. There are no credible reports about such a development.

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The claim originated in a Jan. 24 Facebook post by The Patriots Network, an account that describes itself as “a network of satire and parody” affiliated with the satirical SpaceX Mania website. The website’s publisher, Tim Lawson, confirmed in an email to USA TODAY that the story is a fabrication.

The account that shared the claim without mentioning its satirical origin has the same photo that appears in the version posted by The Patriots Network. In the comments, it links to a blog post on a third-party website about the purported deal.

That article appears to be a word-for-word copy of the one clearly labeled as satire on the SpaceX Mania website. A link to that article was posted in the comment section of The Patriots Network's Jan. 24 Facebook post. There were no satire disclaimers on the third-party blog version of the article.

The Facebook post is an example of what could be called "stolen satire," where stories originally written and presented as satire are captured and reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, which is what happened here.

There are other indicators of the claim's satirical nature. For example, the billion-dollar value of the deal exceeds the price of the brand's parent company when it was sold in 2014. The Pabst Brewing Company was valued at the time between $700 million and $750 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Additionally, the use of the word “ditches” in the headline suggests the existence of a similar deal with Bud Light that Kid Rock terminated. There is no credible evidence Anheuser-Busch has paid him to endorse its products. During a November 2023 interview with Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, Kid Rock said he is “just not in bed with any corporate entities." Later in the broadcast, he said he no longer supports a boycott of the brand.

USA TODAY has debunked an array of false claims involving Bud Light that circulated in the wake of its Mulvaney partnership, including assertions that the company behind the brand created a billboard to call its critics "crybabies" and that movie star Sylvester Stallone turned down a $100 million endorsement offer from the company.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post and to a Pabst spokesperson but did not immediately receive responses.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: False claim Kid Rock, Pabst reached $1 billion deal | Fact check