Ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, AB InBev is once again weaponising sport to push its Corona brand – this time recruiting ten elite athletes as wellness ambassadors for its “Cero” campaign. It’s textbook alibi marketing: a non-alcoholic front product doing the brand-building work for its alcoholic parent, while dodging advertising limitations. The endgame? Normalising the presence of a beer brand at the heart of the world’s biggest sporting event.
AB InBev has recruited ten elite winter athletes as global ambassadors for Corona Cero ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics – embedding an alcohol brand at the heart of the Games through a programme dressed up as athlete wellbeing. The roster includes short track speed skater Arianna Fontana (Italy), snowboarder Ayumu Hirano (Japan), freestyle skier Cassie Sharpe (Canada), and ice hockey star Marie-Philip Poulin (Canada). Each will promote the beer giant’s “TIME CERO” initiative, which offers “Cero Stress Zones,” commemorative golden bottles, and a post-Games retreat to a private island – all while building brand equity for Corona.
Non-Alcoholic Beer, Full-Strength Marketing
Corona Cero is the front brand for AB InBev’s Olympic partnership, which the company extended in 2025 through to the Brisbane 2032 Games. The sponsorship is worth an estimated $1.7 billion, making it one of the largest commercial deals in Olympic history.
The strategic logic is well-documented. Non-alcoholic beer accounts for roughly 2% of global beer volume. Yet alcohol companies invest disproportionately in marketing these products – precisely because they provide a mechanism to circumvent advertising restrictions that would otherwise apply to alcohol brands. The tactic is known as alibi marketing or surrogate marketing: using a low-alcohol or non-alcoholic product to build visibility and brand equity for the alcoholic parent brand.
In the case of Corona Cero, the marketing is entirely interchangeable. The visual identity – colours, logo, bottle shape, and brand name – is indistinguishable from regular Corona, which remains AB InBev’s fastest-growing premium beer worldwide. Each exposure to Corona Cero reinforces the Corona brand. The non-alcoholic variant is the entry point; the alcoholic product is the business model.
AB InBev’s own executives have made the strategy explicit. At the launch of the IOC partnership in 2024, Chief Marketing Officer Marcel Marcondes explained that non-alcoholic beer “opens up new occasions and new opportunities”. In the United States, where Constellation Brands holds the rights to Corona, AB InBev promotes a different product for the Olympics: Michelob Ultra, an alcoholic beer marketed for its “active lifestyle” positioning.
Athletes as Brand Assets
Recruiting elite athletes as ambassadors deepens the normalisation strategy. Athletes bring credibility, aspiration, and reach – particularly among young audiences that are increasingly sceptical of alcohol use. A study with Australian adolescents found that exposure to non-alcoholic beer advertising prompted young people to think about alcohol in similar ways to exposure to alcoholic products. Research with UK adolescents found that when shown non-alcoholic beer advertisements, many participants did not initially recognise them as any different from alcohol advertising.
The use of athlete ambassadors also creates a halo effect. When a gold medallist endorses a beer brand – even a non-alcoholic variant – it signals that the brand is compatible with peak performance, discipline, and health. This framing inverts the scientific reality. Alcohol use is associated with diminished athletic performance, impaired recovery, and increased injury risk. Elite athletes typically avoid alcohol during competition. Yet AB InBev has assembled a roster of athletes to do precisely the opposite: associate their achievements with a beer brand.
Each ambassador’s social media reach, press coverage, and public appearances now serves as a distribution channel for Corona marketing – repackaged as content about relaxation and mindfulness.
Free Media at Scale
One measure of the campaign’s effectiveness is the extent to which AB InBev’s messaging was amplified without critical scrutiny. The press release announcing the athlete ambassadors was republished verbatim across dozens of outlets – including AFP, the Financial Times Markets section, Business Wire India, and numerous regional news aggregators – all carrying the same headline.
This is standard practice for corporate press releases distributed through wire services. But the scale reveals how efficiently alcohol industry messaging is laundered into “news.” No outlet that republished the announcement questioned the premise – that a beer company belongs at the Olympics, that athlete endorsements of beer are appropriate, or that non-alcoholic beer marketing is distinct from alcohol marketing.
The campaign also benefits from the IOC’s own promotional apparatus. The International Olympic Committee describes AB InBev’s sponsorship as aligned with “a commitment to social responsibility, to a healthy lifestyle” – language that reproduces the alcohol industry’s preferred framing. Public health researchers have been more direct. Professor Amandine Garde called the partnership “eminently cynical,” noting that it endorses “the industry playbook of ‘responsible consumption’ when we know that alcohol consumption is harmful per se.”
A Pattern, Not an Incident
AB InBev’s Olympic sponsorship fits a well-established pattern. Heineken uses its 0.0 brand to sponsor Formula 1 – a partnership worth over $300 million – and tennis events including the US Open. Carlsberg has distributed its Tourtel Twist non-alcoholic beer at the Tour de France. Guinness 0.0 sponsors Six Nations rugby. In each case, the non-alcoholic product is the regulatory workaround; the brand architecture does the commercial work.
The WHO’s Global Alcohol Action Plan 2022–2030 identifies “poorly regulated marketing of alcoholic beverages” as a barrier to progress and calls for comprehensive restrictions on advertising, sponsorship, and promotion. Yet voluntary industry codes remain the norm, and alcohol companies continue to find new vectors for exposure.
The athlete ambassador programme at Milano Cortina 2026 represents the next evolution: turning Olympic athletes themselves into promotional vehicles for an alcohol brand, under the banner of wellness.
The IOC-AB InBev Deal: Background
The IOC signed AB InBev as a Worldwide Olympic Partner in January 2024 – the first time the Olympic Games has had a global beer sponsor. The deal was immediately criticised by public health advocates. Alcohol Change UK called it “an odd pairing,” noting that elite athletes typically avoid alcohol. Movendi International called on the IOC to reverse the decision, arguing that it allows “the exploitation of millions of children and young people, by an alcohol company that is already causing serious harm to people and communities worldwide.”
The deal continues a pattern of AB InBev using major sporting events to advance its commercial interests. At the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the company pressured organisers to allow alcohol sales despite local laws. In France, AB InBev’s Budweiser campaign during the same tournament was ruled illegal for violating the Loi Évin, France’s landmark alcohol advertising restrictions.
This case exemplifies the Promotion strategy within the Dubious Five framework. AB InBev is using marketing to drive alcohol availability and acceptability, perpetuate the alcohol norm, and place alcohol at the centre of cultural moments. The focus is on shaping public attitudes and consumer behaviour – normalising the idea that beer belongs at the Olympics, that elite athletes endorse beer brands, and that non-alcoholic beer is a health product rather than a marketing device.
The campaign also involves elements of Manipulation – deploying the language of wellness, mindfulness, and sustainability to mask commercial objectives. The “Cero Stress Zones,” the “Relaxation Clause,” and the post-Games island retreat are all lifestyle marketing strategies designed to associate Corona with aspirational experiences, rather than with alcohol harm.
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Related reading:
- Predatory Practice: Olympic Committee Enters Partnership with Big Alcohol Giant – Movendi International
- Still Advertising Alcohol: How NoLo and Alibi Sponsorship Keep Alcohol Brands in Front of Young People – Movendi International
- Special Feature: Alcohol Marketing in Sports – Movendi International
- Heineken’s 0.0 Strategy – A Trojan Horse for Alcohol Marketing – Big Alcohol Exposed
- Heineken at the US Open – classic alibi marketing dressed as inclusion – Big Alcohol Exposed
- AB InBev Company Profile – Movendi International