BrewDog are now making jokes about their Qatar World Cup controversy

BrewDog is back in the news again after it sparked a backlash with its new ‘anti-sponsorship’ campaign against the Qatar world cup – and then proceeded to make a number of jokes about it.

The company has attracted criticism this week after hitting out at Qatar’s hosting of the Fifa World Cup with donations to human rights organisations, while still planning to show the football competition in its venues.

The company announced on Monday it would be giving all of the profits made from its Lost Lager during the contest to “causes fighting human rights abuses”, branding the World Cup a “World F*Cup” instead.

“Football’s been dragged through the mud, before a single ball’s been kicked. Let’s be honest: Qatar won it through bribery - on an industrial scale," BrewDog said at the time.

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The company has come under fire following its latest initiative Getty images

The company came in for criticism online from social media users hitting out at the perceived hypocrisy of the initiative, given they're still planning to show games.

Since then, Brewdog has been poking fun at the reaction.

The company’s official Twitter account posted a joke “to do list”, which read: “Monday 7 November.

• Publish World Cup Lost Lager charity donation announcement.
• Watch Twitter explode.
• Continue watching Twitter explode.

Tuesday 8 November

• Is Twitter still exploding?”

The account also wrote: “Good morning. Have I missed anything? Here I was thinking Elon Musk was causing Twitter to meltdown. When in fact, it's a post about a beer company raising money for charity.”

It comes after Brewdog also released a statement to Just Drinks, confirming that its beers were available for sale in Qatar via a third party distributor, and argued this “doesn’t mean it endorses human rights abuses” in the country.

“We are pleased our campaign has struck a nerve and successfully raised huge awareness of the continued human rights abuses in Qatar,” a spokesperson for BrewDog said. “We don’t sell direct to Qatar but we do have a relationship with a distributor that sells into multiple Middle Eastern markets, primarily into Dubai but including Qatar. Apple sells iPhones in Qatar – that doesn’t mean it endorses human rights abuses. Neither do we.

“We are doing our bit to raise awareness of these scandals and injustices and will keep doing so. If people want to attack brands, maybe they’d be better off turning their attention to the likes of Adidas, Kia and Visa who are all official partners of FIFA.”

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