This is a Clever Blog Title

futurejournalismproject:

We tried posting this earlier using the Tumblr video uploader but the video was never processed… So for the evening crowd:

Michigan State University’s Philip H. Howard visualizes an ever important question: Just who owns our beer. 

Along with visualizing ownership structure, Howard gives us some history as well:

In 1959 the 10th largest brewery in the country (Pabst) acquired the 18th largest brewery (Blatz), resulting in a combined national market share of 4.5%. Seven years later the US Supreme Court reversed the merger, noting that:

If not stopped, this decline in the number of separate competitors and this rise in the share of the market controlled by the larger beer manufacturers are bound to lead to greater and greater concentration of the beer industry into fewer and fewer hands.

Today, just two firms control more than three-quarters of all sales.

Globally, the top four firms (AB InBev, MillerCoors, Heineken and Carlsberg) control 50 percent of the market and almost two-thirds of the industry’s profits.

We say: let’s support local microbrews.

H/T: Flowing Data