During the nationally syndicated “Clay& Buck” show on Thursday, Clay Travis, the founder of Outkick, disclosed to his audience that he had previously lost a sponsorship deal with Jack Daniels because of his political beliefs. Travis has previously criticized advertising agencies for allowing political bias to affect their purchasing decisions, particularly on his program “Clay & Buck.”
“I sit here and think, how do we return to normalcy?” Travis said. “Nike and Bud Light are two of the biggest ad spenders ever. Nike and Bud Light would never spend money on this radio show because Buck and I are too controversial, and our opinions on this show are too controversial to be associated with beer and tennis shoes.”
Travis stated that a couple of years ago, he was scheduled to attend a paid appearance sponsored by Jack Daniels.
“I’m not opposed to whiskey, I’m not opposed to alcohol, they reached out to me here in Nashville where I live,” he said. “They said we will pay you several thousand dollars to show up and take a couple of whiskey drinks; I was like, fine, I’ll do it.”
The week before the appearance, Travis said news broke about one of the schools Travis is an alum of, Vanderbilt University, planning to spend more than a million dollars to remove the term “Confederate” from a 19th-century building. The building was designed to honor the soldiers that fought for the Confederate Army.
“Nobody could even see it; nobody even knew that it said Confederate anymore,” he added. “I came out, and I said this to me is everything that is wrong with trying to wokeify our history. I disagree with it as an alum of Vanderbilt University.”
Travis said that when he made that statement, Jack Daniels canceled his endorsement appearance and told him they could no longer be affiliated with him.
“Just for sharing my opinion that the word ‘Confederate’ shouldn’t pay a million dollars at Vanderbilt University to have the word sandblasted off a building. I think the idea that we completely erase a historically relevant issue is a bad precedent to set.”
