The Mark Anthony Group of Companies has agreed to acquire The Finnish Long Drink, a canned, gin-based sparkling cocktail. Terms of the transaction, which was announced today and is set to finalize in coming weeks, are undisclosed.
Mark Anthony, which owns popular ready-to-drink brands like White Claw Hard Seltzer and Mike’s Hard Lemonade, will acquire The Finnish Long Drink as the brand comes off a year with near-20 percent growth in volume and sales of 3.3 million 9-liter case equivalents, according to Shanken News Daily’s Impact Databank. The same database ranks Long Drink as the sixth-largest spirit-based ready-to-drink (RTD) brand last year.
The sparkling cocktail comes in a number of fruity flavors like Peach, Cranberry, and Traditional Citrus. ‘Long drinks’ were first invented by the Finnish government for the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics and have since become a popular choice in the country, according to Mark Anthony’s release.
Shanken’s Impact Databank ranks Mark Anthony as the fourth-largest beer and flavored malt beverage marketer in the U.S. Its Long Drink acquisition follows transactions involving similar-sized spirit RTD brands: Earlier this month, Molson Coors acquired Atomic Brands, the maker of Monaco, which also reported sales of 3.3 million 9-liter case equivalents in 2025.
Long Drink’s status as a fast-growing brand within its category made it an attractive buy for Mark Anthony, chief executive officer Phil Rosse says in the release.
“Long Drink has already established strong momentum and a clear point of difference in the RTD space, and we see a meaningful opportunity to build on that success by expanding its reach and bringing it to more consumers,” Rosse says.
VP Pro Take
“This is such an obvious move it almost makes me angry. On one hand, Mark Anthony Brands’ (MAB) malt- and cane-based fermentables have been at the forefront of the consumer pivot away from ingredient quality and artisanal provenance and towards big-honkin’ commodity flavors. On the other hand, Finnish Long Drink (FLD) has taken advantage of that turn with a higher-price point, spirits-based hard seltzer heir-apparent that has been a bona fide segment-expanding hit in the red-hot ready-to-drink segment.
MAB had dabbled with a vodka-based White Claw extension to respond to the threat from High Noon but began phasing out White Claw Vodka + Soda in summer 2025. It has had more luck with its Clawtails flavored-malt-beverage (FMB) line, which has no doubt helped to blunt attrition in the face of the explosive rise of Cutwater et al. But you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and you don’t bring an FMB to a spirits-based RTD fight. Now, MAB won’t have to.
I’ll have a deeper look at this deal in my column Friday at Hop Take, but for now, I want to flag a couple angles here. First, the timing here is hilarious when you consider Molson Coors (MC) just announced its acquisition of Monaco parent company Atomic Brands, a solid and safe value brand that lacks FLD’s super-premium positioning and price point. I haven’t seen any reporting yet confirming whether MC was looking at FLD as an alternative, but, like Four Loko, it was clearly for sale, and MC did not wind up with it. Was that a coincidence, or a choice? And if it was a choice, whose — FLD’s or MC’s? Hmm.
Second, this deal means more consolidation in Bump Williams Consulting’s “flavored alcohol” pseudo-segment, in which 10 vendors already own over 80 percent of the dollars.
Third, and maybe most importantly, this gives MAB’s sales force a high-end, spirits-based RTD to complement the firm’s already-scaled FMB drink-alikes at a time when the latter’s sales have finally started to plateau. The White Claw parent doesn’t produce beer as such, but if you count its FMBs, it’s the category’s fourth-largest supplier. There’s a haves/have-nots dynamic emerging among the country’s biggest brewers, and with FLD, MAB is now with the haves.
There’s no guarantee that this deal will be more successful than MC’s Atomic acquisition, and that’s not really the bar, anyway — both firms have to compete in a broader market against giants like Gallo and Anheuser-Busch InBev. But MAB and FDL are one of the most intuitive fits in recent supplier M&A, and that should help execution.” —Dave Infante, VinePair columnist and contributing editor
