World: AB InBev fully acquires rating site RateBeer.com
ZX Ventures, a division of AB InBev, now has fully acquired popular rating site RateBeer.com, the Beer Street Journal reported on February 4.
In a forum post, the site revealed that ZX Ventures now has full ownership of the website. In 2016, ZX Ventures took a minority stake in RateBeer, only for it to be revealed by the founder in 2017. This prompted some craft brewers to ask RateBeer to delete their rating’s data, out of fear of manipulation by Anheuser-Busch.
According to the site’s founder, this new capital will not affect the day-to-day of the website.
“RateBeer is a quality-focused organization, and our value to the community has always depended on our integrity, and willingness to put in greater effort to produce more meaningful scores and information,” the official announcement says.
While RateBeer has stated repeatedly that AB InBev does not influence the beer ratings, one user ironically found the highly ranked beers nearby to be questionable.
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