White Sox Bring Back Miller Lite to Guaranteed Rate Field

The Chicago White Sox are bringing back something familiar to the ballpark. After news broke earlier in the week that the team was dumping Goose Island Beer Co. and Revolution Brewing as sponsors, the team announced a reunion with Miller Lite and the rest of the beers in the Molson Coors portfolio.

Over the last couple of years, the Sox haven’t relied on a single official beer. Instead, the team has divided the sponsorship opportunities between multiple brands including Goose Island, Revolution, and Modelo. With those deals up for renewal this year, Molson Coors pounced. One source says the offer to be the team’s sole sponsor was so lucrative that Goose Island and the other breweries weren’t given a chance to counter. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the team presumably now has more money that may or not be spent.

With that, Molson Coors’s brands are now “the official domestic beer, official craft beer and an official hard seltzer partner of the White Sox.” That’s right: Try pairing peanuts and Cracker Jack with Vizzy Hard Seltzer — the official hard seltzer of the South Siders. Molson Coors is also bringing in Superbird, the company’s ready-to-drink canned cocktail line.

Miller Lite was around Sox Park for 30 years before, as the Tribune notes, the 2016 season. That’s when the team began inking breweries to smaller deals, like Modelo Especial and Corona, which will continue as official imported beer sponsor. For context, Major League Baseball on Tuesday morning announced that Corona is its “official cerveza.” Meanwhile, at Sox Park, Revolution Brewing is no longer a beer sponsor.

When fans crowd into Guaranteed Rate Field for the start of the season in April, they’ll see sections with new names that reflect the change in sponsorships: the former Goose Island in right field is now the Miller Lite Landing; the former Revolution #SoxSocial Tap Room near right field is now the Vizzy View Bar.

Many Sox fans were wondering about the status of the Craft Kave, the bar and restaurant under the right field bleachers that offers field-level views through the opposing team’s bullpen. While that area will be renamed the Leinenkugel’s Craft Lodge, a White Sox spokesperson assures that the beer selection — which has included brews from independent makers from all over the city and Northwest Indiana — will not be affected. Fans can expect the coolers to remain stocked with a wide variety of suds.