Dogfish Head, for one, wants nothing to do with ratebeer after this.
The forum apologists are out in full force. Apparently it’s “no big deal”. “Just a minority share”
What is the big deal? Honest question. This isn’t a brewery takeover.
Ratebeer is a site that A) rates the new owners’ various beers, and B) provides private data and metrics for the new owners’ marketing department.
So concern over continued independence and data privacy.
Conflict of interest. RateBeer needs to stop rating ABI beers and fully disclose to raters (and the public) what information is being passed to ABI and how it is being used.
Ah. Gotcha. Thanks, fellas.
Dogfish Head just asked RateBeer to pull all their ratings and had a very eloquent statement discussing journalistic integrity.
It was a nice statement, but they have no leg to stand on w/r/t that request.
RateBeer holds a couple big festivals every year (one in Santa Rosa and one at other places around the country) where they invite all the top rated beer producers. These are a big money-maker for RateBeer. If the top producers all tell them to go suck eggs, their festivals go down the tubes. I haven’t talked to a brewer yet who doesn’t see a problem with this.
RateBeer has zero credibility now in my opinion.