coors
Local employees: 2,150
Hometown support
Coors Field naming rights (since 1991); Colorado Rockies (1994)
Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Rapids, National Lacrosse League Colorado Mammoth, Ball Arena)
National Western Stock Show
Colorado Silver Bullets (all-female professional barnstorming baseball team that played from 1994 to 1997)
Denver’s hometown brewery put its name on the city’s proposed ballpark four months before the city was approved for a team and more than four years before the Colorado Rockies’ ballpark opened. The brewer also had a 14.5% stake in the new club (which it sold in 2013), and its Sandlot Brewery at Coors Field was the first working brewery in a U.S. sports venue. “Blue Moon was literally born in our ballpark,” said Kevin Kahn, the Rockies’ longtime vice president and chief customer service officer of ballpark operations.
The relationship expanded in 2018 when the ballpark’s popular rooftop bar was branded as the Coors Light Silver Bullet Bar.
The company’s relationship with KSE’s Denver-based properties provides opportunities for unique activations, such as when the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 2022.
“We partnered with KSE to brew a batch of Coors Light with actual ice shavings from the game ice at Ball Arena,” said Candace Hancock, a Denver-based Molson Coors field marketing manager. “We brewed 100 kegs for local bars and bottled 250 commemorative bottles that were in the players’ locker room the morning of the victory parade. Sports and beer are both critical parts of Denver culture and economy, and we’re happy to connect the two!”
That local relationship is experienced globally by anyone drinking a canned beverage, as Coors pioneered the seamless two-piece aluminum beer can in the 1950s and created a can manufacturing division that was later purchased by Ball, which now has naming rights to the Kroenke-owned arena. Ball and Coors own a longtime joint venture that makes cans exclusively for Coors.
