Across eight countries, Stella Artois is selling the act of serving a beer as a display of power and status, set in the world of Netflix’s The Gentlemen. One year into AB InBev’s global partnership with Netflix, the brewer’s advertising now arrives as entertainment.
Netflix released the second season of Guy Ritchie’s crime drama The Gentlemen on 3 September 2026. AB InBev and Netflix launched the campaign “The Gentlemen’s Serve” alongside it in eight countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea. Series lead Theo James appears in character opposite Sir David Beckham in a set of short films, with social media content on both companies’ channels, limited-edition chalices and a three-day takeover of a London pub.
It is the first multi-country campaign under the partnership the two companies announced in September 2025. Since then AB InBev has advertised around Netflix live events, run a campaign in South Korea built on the series Culinary Class Wars, and in Brazil built beer into Netflix storylines and turned Bridgerton into a channel for alcopops. The 2027 Women’s World Cup, which Netflix will stream exclusively in the United States and Canada, is next.
BUILT ON “occasions for beer”
Marcel Marcondes, AB InBev’s Global Chief Marketing Officer, has described what the partnership buys. Streaming, he said at the launch, is “an occasion where beer and entertainment come together”, and the shows Netflix makes about sport, music, comedy and food represent “natural beer occasions, where our brands are already present”.
The company’s second quarter 2026 results describe the strategy as “offering more choices across more occasions” and report progress on its “category expansion levers”. Sales and marketing investment reached 4.1 billion USD in the first half of 2026, up 9% on the year before. The direction of travel is alcohol everywhere, all the time.
AB InBev has attached its brands to most of the world’s shared events already, from FIFA sponsorship going back close to four decades to an Olympic partnership running to 2032 and World Cup 2026. Watching a series at home was one of the few remaining parts of ordinary life with no fixed place for alcohol branding. The Netflix partnership changes that.
Marketing that arrives as entertainment
“The Gentlemen’s Serve” was made by the agency GUT Amsterdam in cooperation with Netflix Brand Studio, the streaming company’s own creative unit. Magno Herran, Netflix’s VP of Global Brand & Marketing Partnerships, called it “a true piece of entertainment” that lets fans “experience the show in their everyday lives”.
The films use the series lead in character, copy the show’s look and pacing, and carry the brand in the title on Stella Artois’ own channels. One campaign runs in eight countries at once. In Brazil, beer is not covered by the alcohol advertising law at all, because the law counts only drinks above 13% alcohol as alcoholic, leaving beer marketing to the industry’s own voluntary code. In most of the other seven the rules reaching social media are voluntary too. South Korea is the exception, having made its alcohol advertising standards binding on YouTube and social media in 2021.
Movendi International and more than 50 partner organisations asked Netflix to exclude alcohol advertising from its ad-supported plan in 2022, before that plan launched. Netflix excluded gambling. It did not exclude alcohol.
Selling status and control
The creative idea, in AB InBev’s own words, is that “to perfectly serve a Stella Artois is more than a pour, it’s a power play”. Its World Cup campaign in April 2026, also fronted by David Beckham, sold the “ritual of watching the game with friends”.
The UK advertising code states that alcohol marketing “must not claim or imply that alcohol can enhance confidence or popularity” and must not “link alcohol with brave, tough or daring people or behaviour”. Netflix’s own executive sums up the appeal of the series as “the style, the stakes, the swagger”. The campaign places the brand inside that world.
The audience the industry says it does not reach
AB InBev’s Responsible Marketing and Communications Code allows the company to place marketing wherever “at least 70% of the audience is reasonably expected to be of legal drinking age”, leaving up to 30% below it. For celebrities, it asks that “a minimum of 70% of the sponsored person’s or brand spokesperson’s fan base” be of legal age. AB InBev publishes no evidence that Beckham’s audience meets that test, and the code gives no one outside the company a way to check.
The same code states that all platforms owned or managed by AB InBev “will include an age affirmation mechanism”. The campaign’s main film sits on Stella Artois’ own YouTube channel, where it plays without signing in and without any age check. The channel links directly to the brand’s TikTok and Instagram accounts.
Netflix reports more than 250 million monthly active viewers on its ad-supported plan, a figure it calculates by multiplying members by estimated household size. Common Sense Media rates The Gentlemen suitable from age 15.
What ALCOHOL MARKETING exposure does
The effect on young people is well established. A systematic review of 12 longitudinal studies from seven countries, covering more than 35,000 young people under the legal age, found that the more alcohol marketing they were exposed to, the more likely they were to start using alcohol and to move on to heavy episodic use. Several of the studies found exposure among younger adolescents as high as among older ones.
Streaming carries that exposure heavily. A content analysis of the highest-rated Netflix and Amazon Prime original series released in 2016 found alcohol content in 94% of episodes, against 54% of UK prime-time television episodes, and alcohol branding in 32% of episodes against 13% on television. The most frequently seen alcohol brand in that sample was Budweiser, and it appeared only in Netflix originals.
Sources
Netflix and Stella Artois Bring the Perfect Serve to The Gentlemen Season 2 (AB InBev).
GUT Asia launches Stella Artois x Netflix Culinary Class Wars campaign in South Korea (Campaign Brief Asia).
AB InBev teams with Netflix for co-branded campaigns around live events (Marketing Dive).
Analysis: Netflix, AB InBev deal shakes up alcohol ad market (Advanced Television).
Jernigan, D., Noel, J., Landon, J., Thornton, N., & Lobstein, T. (2017). Alcohol marketing and youth alcohol consumption: a systematic review of longitudinal studies published since 2008. Addiction, 112(S1), 7–20.
Barker, A. B., Smith, J., Hunter, A., Britton, J., & Murray, R. L. (2019). Quantifying tobacco and alcohol imagery in Netflix and Amazon Prime instant video original programming accessed from the UK: a content analysis. BMJ Open, 9(2), e025807.