In the early 1980s, a Macon, Georgia businessman named Bill Laite had a hunch that proved prescient, albeit a few decades early: He figured that a beer referencing a locally beloved college football team would sell.
He was right—and he got sued for it.
Laite’s Battlin' Bulldog Beer appeared, according to legal documents, in “red-and-black cans bearing the portrayal of an English bulldog wearing a red sweater emblazoned with a black ‘G.’ The bulldog had bloodshot eyes, a football tucked under its right ‘arm,’ and a frothy beer stein in its left ‘hand.’”
Fans of the University of Georgia Bulldogs loved the beer. The University of Georgia Athletic Association, Inc. was less enamored. They argued that Battlin’ Bulldog was an unauthorized reference to its mascot, and sued Laite to prevent him from selling the beer. (Laite had, before launching the beer, reportedly asked the University for permission to use the Bulldog mascot and was turned down.) The case plodded its way through lower courts and the appeals process before the Eleventh Circuit Court ruled in 1985 in favor of the University. As recently as 2005, the University of Georgia’s Board of Regents had a policy on the books prohibiting University trademarks from appearing on alcoholic beverages.
But the tide has turned so dramatically in favor of college sports and alcohol collaborations that Laite must feel like a man born at the wrong time. Today, Athens, Georgia-based Creature Comforts Brewing Co. is the official beer of University of Georgia athletics.
“The same university that sued a Georgia beer company is now seeking out sponsorship deals with alcohol companies. It shows you how far this has come,” says Tim DeSchriver, associate professor of sport management in the Lerner College of Business and Economics at University of Delaware.
WHY IT MATTERS
With the 2023 college football season fully kicking off this week, a roster of teams across conferences and geographies have announced new partnerships with breweries of all sizes, from Indiana University (Hoosier Gameday Lager with Upland Brewing Company) to East Carolina University (Pirates Brew with R&D Brewing) to University of Southern California (Fight On! Pale Ale with Stone Brewing) to Florida State (Legacy Lager with Oyster City Brewing Company). Per Brewbound, Des Moines, Iowa's Exile Brewing is on pace to grow by +6,000 barrels this year because of its Swarm Golden Ale, made in partnership with Swarm Collective, a non-profit established to support University of Iowa athletes. Swarm's sales velocity has been so fast that brewery leadership say it could become its No. 1 seller, surpassing Exile's flagship Lager that's been around for a decade.
Naturally, the country’s biggest beer companies won’t be left out:
Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) will debut a flurry of college-branded cans this season, in some cases offering cans of Bud Light emblazoned with logos of universities who also have craft beer partnerships.
In the Lone Star State, Texas A&M switched a beer partnership from ABI to Molson Coors, whose craft subsidiary, Revolver Brewing, will make a new A&M-themed beer. This presumably ends an ABI-made A&M beer, produced through its own craft brewery, Karbach Brewing.
And it’s not just beer, either: Flavored wine brand BeatBox has launched a new package cobranded with Oklahoma State University.
Such partnerships are theoretically win-wins for colleges and alcohol companies: Schools see a way to promote athletic departments and earn money from licensing and sales, while beer makers and beyond hope to sell more products by tapping into a new audience of sports fans. But as the alcohol and college sports field becomes more crowded, it’s creating rivalries, tensions, and questions about just how big these booster beers can get.
Until the last few years, most universities were wary of co-branded alcohol deals, worried that they could run counter to schools’ attempts to curb underage and binge drinking.
“The argument has typically been: Three-quarters of our undergrads are probably under 21,” DeScriver says. “How can we say we’re trying to teach young people responsible drinking but they can go to our games and buy our beer?”
The hesitation has mostly gone out the window. While some schools still don’t sell beer at their stadiums, many do—and are proud to get local alcohol companies in on the action.
“We’re a bourbon city. We have a million different microbreweries. We’re not shy about the fact that our fans like to drink,” says Olivia Biven, director of brand marketing and licensing at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky. The school’s Cardinals football team will hold its first home game of the season Thursday, and the stadium will pour Cardinale, a Blonde Ale brewed by Louisvlle’s Gravely Brewing. “We’re very much proud to be a foodie and a drinkie town. When I came [to this job] and we didn’t have a branded consumable, it was mind-boggling to me.”
It took just a few schools dipping their toes into the branded alcohol waters to open the floodgates. Once a first wave of schools established alcohol partnerships, other colleges were quick to follow.
“Universities and athletic departments, they like to imitate one another,” says Tim Barnes, co-founder of Black Tooth Brewing in Sheridan, Wyoming, which this year began brewing University of Wyoming-affiliated Wyoming Golden Ale. “When they see one institution doing it, they want to piggyback.”
There’s a bit of a rivalry and school pride aspect to that competition, but the real motivation, DeSchriver says, is revenue.
“The main reason is money. There’s no other way to put it,” he says.
While large state schools in major athletic conferences might not desperately need the revenue because they can rely on ticket sales, merchandise, and broadcast rights, their sports teams still vigorously compete to build the best stadiums and fund the most well-financed programs to attract top talent. Smaller schools’ athletic departments, on the other hand, are more likely to rely on marketing revenue to cover the basics.
“The Ohio States and Texases of the world, do they need the money? Probably not,” DeSchriver says. “But if you’re a Youngstown State or a Central Michigan, they’re operating at big deficits. … Whether sponsorships, booster donations, concession sales, parking, doesn’t matter. Schools are always looking to generate more.”
Billings, Montana’s Rocky Mountain College—undergrad enrollment 774—has a branded Cream Ale with neighboring Meadowlark Brewing. Larger-but-not-powerhouse schools like Kent State, Indiana State, UC Davis, and UNC Charlotte are all in on branded beers, too. No matter a college’s size or the monetary prize, there’s money to be made.
Schools make money on alcohol partnerships via licensing deals. A brewery pays a fee to license the school’s name, mascot, and other assets, and most are structured so that the school makes money based on the volume of beer sold. Barnes declined to cite the financial terms of Black Tooth’s revenue sharing agreement with the University of Wyoming, but says that because it’s driven by the beer’s performance, it ensures both the brewery and the school are working to make the project successful. Likewise, in the case of Cardinale, the licensing fees Gravely Brewing pays to the University of Louisville increase as it sells more beer. Gravely and the school split marketing costs to cover promotional items, like cardboard cutouts of the school mascot, Louie the Cardinal, for display in grocery stores.
Like universities, breweries also come to the negotiating table looking for a mix of bragging rights and dollar signs. Barnes says that if any brewery was going to make a University of Wyoming beer, it was going to be Black Tooth, which has three taprooms across the state in Sheridan, Cheyenne, and Casper. “As a company that’s always been focused on Wyoming, it was something we needed to have in our portfolio,” he says.
The volume sales are appealing, too. When craft beer sales are down overall—craft beer is -6.6% in volume during the most recent 52-week period in chain retail tracked by market research company Circana—breweries must look for new avenues for growth. Last year, Black Tooth Brewing met its 2019 levels of beer production (about 9,500 barrels) after a two-year dip; if Wyoming Golden Ale proves popular, it could be a significant growth-driver for the brewery. Barnes estimates it will be a top-5 beer for the brewery, and could rise to No. 3 or 4 if it sells especially well.
That seems like a good assumption: Without any sales yet at Wyoming's football stadium, projections for the Golden Ale are already 800-1,000 BBLs over a 12-month span. That's an amount most craft breweries produce in a year across an entire portfolio. If that production estimate is a baseline, Wyoming Golden Ale will easily slide in as a top-brand for the brewery.
Such collegiate-branded beers look potentially transformational for small breweries. At West O Beer in Milford, Iowa, a new beer called Ames Lager—referencing the town where Iowa State University is located—could double the brewery’s output and help fast-track a planned expansion. Last year, West O brewed 2,500 barrels (BBLs) of beer total, and co-owner Matt Matthiesen says the brewery is on pace to brew 3,000 BBLs of Ames Lager alone this year. That would make Ames Lager far and away the brewery’s top-selling beer. Matthiesen is even in discussions to expand distribution of West O beer to the northeast and southeast corners of the state, primarily in order to meet demand there for Ames Lager.
Ames Lager represents a huge opportunity—and logistical commitment—for the small brewery. West O had to develop a new beer recipe, a new can design, and marketing plans for a beer within about 60 days if it wanted to launch in time for the start of football season. Despite purchasing three new 30-barrel fermenters this month to accommodate Ames Lager, Matthiesen says the brewery is only able to provide its distributors with about half the volume of the beer those wholesalers are requesting. An upcoming expansion of the brewing facility, slated for completion by April, should give West O capacity to brew 6,000-8,000 BBLs of Ames Lager next year.
It’s a massive commitment: Essential, West O is becoming the Ames Lager brewery. Mattiesen says this is the production boon the brewery needed as it’s competing with a proliferating number of breweries while shelf space only gets tighter.
“We’ve decided we’re in this for the long haul and we’re going to make the investments we need to brew more of it,” Matthiesen says. “Not to mention, it should increase the visibility of our other beers.”
West O is pushing its chips all-in on Ames Lager, but the waters are relatively untested. Craft brewery-university athletics partnerships are just a few years old. Old Aggie, a beer brewed since 2017 by Fort Collins, Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing in partnership with Colorado State University, ranks among the oldest. Last year, Old Aggie sold 15,344 cases of beer in chain retail tracked by Circana, down -37% from the 24,334 cases it sold in 2018, but more than its volumes in 2019 and 2020.
New Belgium also brewed Old Tuffy Lager in support of North Carolina State University from 2019 until early 2023. Now, Raleigh-based R&D Brewing will sell NC State’s Riviera, a Mexican-style lager. The switch may have been a result of declining sales; Old Tuffy sold 3,365 cases last year, less than 10% the volume it sold in its debut year. Biven admits that colleges don’t have much data against which to benchmark their projections.
“It’s such a new and trending category that there’s not a huge amount of data,” she says. “Is it going to be super trendy and exciting now, and then over the course of a few years, die down? We don’t have a rulebook for licensing consumables.”
Strong initial sales followed by a cooling of interest does appear to be a pattern among the relatively small number of such beers tracked by Cicana. Of 18 breweries in a data set that have been selling collegiate-tied beers since 2018, not one has subsequently matched the sales volumes they saw in the beers’ first or second year. (This chain retail data does not account for sales of the beer from the brewery taproom, on draft at restaurants, or at stadiums.)
The most successful version of this college-and-craft team up was in 2018, when Old Aggie earned $726,000 in chain retail sales.
In 2019, Avery Brewing introduced Stampede—"a Colorado Gold Lager" made in partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder—which made $370,500 in those stores, roughly the same as Old Aggie.
Stampede was the best-selling college-craft brand in 2022, selling 7,700 trackable cases and earning $263,600.
This pattern represents a risk for small breweries. West O has invested in new equipment, and Gravely is prioritizing brewing Cardinale so it can be fermented and canned in time for a football season launch in the University of Louisville’s L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium as well as Kroger grocery stores in two states (Kentucky and southern portions of Indiana). Time and money spent on brewing co-branded beers is time and money that’s not spent on the brewery’s other brands. Biven says Gravely has already seen an uptick in taproom visitors and sales of the Cardinale beer, but the key will be to sustain those over months and years.
“The more they’re filling their tanks with Cardinale, the more they’re not canning other beers that lovers of Gravely want to find on shelves,” Biven says. “I walked in there on Tuesday and four of their tanks were just Cardinale.”
Universities, distributors, and retailers expect small breweries to be able to meet high demand for co-branded beers in year one, sometimes requiring additional capital investment from the brewery. But if that momentum isn’t maintained, it’s the brewery that will potentially be left with excess capacity.
What on paper look to be simple agreements between universities and breweries are actually anything but. The universe of beer and college athletics contains constellations of stakeholders, each with its own interests and agenda.
In the case of the Wyoming Golden Ale, for example, the process began nearly five years ago. It’s not the University of Wyoming that owns the rights to the iconic bucking horse and rider that comprise its logo; those belong to the State of Wyoming, which licenses them to the university. As a result, the request for proposals the university’s athletic department sent out in spring 2022 to find a brewery partner involved not only the school but also representatives from the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office.
Soon, the negotiations also included Wyoming Sports Properties, a division of collegiate sports marketing company LEARFIELD, which represents more than 200 collegiate teams and conferences.
“There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen,” Barnes summarizes.
Wyoming Sports Properties is the university’s exclusive athletics multimedia rights holder and sports marketing partner, and has ultimate say in advertising and signage within the stadium. Prior to Black Tooth’s involvement, the University of Wyoming and LEARFIELD had an established partnership with Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI), an agreement that continues today. This includes in-stadium advertising for ABI products and co-branded Bud Light cans; even the press release announcing the partnership between Black Tooth and the University also made mention of those cans and the school’s “long-term partnership with Anheuser-Busch.”
The complexities of what could be seen as competing beer deals has caused tension. Because of a lack of agreement with LEARFIELD on in-stadium advertising for the new Black Tooth beer, a week before the university’s first home football game, there was no consensus on whether that beer would even be sold in the arena. Such conflicts have been a hurdle, but one that Barnes is willing to overlook in favor of the project’s long-term potential.
“We’re happy with the arrangement even though some of the headaches that accompany it are a bit difficult,” he says.
Beer companies aren’t the only ones jostling for a piece of this collegiate-sports-and-alcohol pie. Name, image, and likeness (NIL) collectives are also drawing their chairs to the table. These collectives sprung up following a Supreme Court ruling in 2021 that allowed college athletes to profit from uses of their name, image, and likeness. They are third-party groups independent of the university and are usually made up of alumni and boosters. They use their influence to broker marketing deals between sponsors—from Nike to local car washes—and student-athletes. The list of potential marketing partners includes breweries of all kinds: Non-alcoholic beer company Athletic Brewing has been especially active with NILs, partnering with 2022 Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Caleb Williams (and becoming the official non-alcoholic beer of University of Southern California).
West O’s Ames Lager is a collaboration with the We Will Collective, which benefits Iowa State athletes; West O has promised We Will Collective $3 per case equivalent of beer sold. (The collaboration was a direct response to the University of Iowa’s NIL collective, called the Swarm Collective, which brokered a beer deal with Des Moines’ Exile Brewing.) But Ames Lager isn’t the only Iowa State beer that Cyclones fans might want to support: There’s also an official Iowa State-branded beer brewed by Backpocket Brewing in Coralville. Some schools are wondering whether two beers, whose branding appears to support the same football team, is unhealthy competition.
“For athletic departments long term, the question is: [NIL-brewery partnerships] are great for the student athletes, but is the beer company bypassing being an official sponsor of the athletic department?” DeSchriver says. “So far, it seems to be new money coming in. But long term … athletic department administrators are afraid they’ll see sponsorship money go down.”
In the short term, schools, collectives, boosters, and breweries alike appear willing to set aside hesitations lest they miss out on the gold rush. The scale, profitability, and longevity of such projects isn’t clear, but despite the uncertainties, no one wants to be left on the sidelines.
Words by Kate Bernot