Sports and beer go hand in hand whether it’s on the couch, watching in the stands or having a pint after a pickup game with friends. While large brands like Budweiser and Miller Lite are often the “official” beers of major league teams and big events like the Super Bowl or the World Series, soccer teams have found the sponsorship of smaller regional and craft breweries more akin to their sensibilities.
Soccer’s popularity in America has waxed and waned over the years. The North American Soccer League of the 1970s filled stadiums until its disappearance in 1984. The United States hosted the World Cup in 1994 and the nation’s decent showing in front of a home crowd helped build some loyalty back into the sport. In 1996, Major League Soccer (MLS) was born. Its start was rocky and full of financial difficulties, but is currently very popular due in part to global stars like David Beckham and Leo Messi.
Soccer’s rise in the early part of the 21st century is reminiscent of craft brewing. Soccer has been around for ages and yet some of its very popular teams are less than a decade old. Craft beer has had a similar path. Beer has been a beverage enjoyed for millennia yet its recent large surge in the U.S. has been happening for 40 years old. Now the two are intertwined, with many teams pairing up with local craft breweries for special beers, events, and more.
This includes larger regional breweries like SweetWater Brewing Co. and the MLS team Atlanta United FC to Chicago-based Revolution Brewing and Chicago Fire FC. Revolution brews a 5.0% ABV Hazy Pitch beer for distribution in tandem with the team. More recently Portland’s Allagash Brewing Company signed on as an official brewery partner to Maine’s first pro soccer team, Portland Hearts of Pine.
Even in the United Soccer League (USL), the “farm” system of MLS gets into the action by showcasing smaller breweries. Grand Central Brewhouse in St. Petersburg, Florida makes a Leg Day IPA for its local USL team the Tampa Bay Rowdies, while Bosque Brewing Co. has its logo on the back of New Mexico United’s jerseys.
Sometimes soccer is ingrained into where you come from.
Adam Robbings was born and raised in England, where he rooted for Tottenham Hotspur, a popular English Premier League team. Later, as a cofounder of Reuben’s Brews in Seattle, Washington, he looked for a way to connect his job with his passion. He found the opportunity to do so when Tottenham came to Seattle to play an exhibition game (known as a “friendly”) against the Seattle Sounders FC in 2014, two years after Reuben’s Brews opened.
“We brewed a charity beer in collaboration with the clubs and local supporters groups,” says Robbings. “It was so fun, and from that moment on we’ve been heavily involved with beer and soccer.”
With this spirit, Reuben’s Brews is the lead sponsor of a semi-professional team Ballard FC. The Reuben’s Brews logo is emblazoned on the front of the jerseys and each year the soccer team and the brewery make a collaboration beer. This year it’s Up the Bridges, a name which comes from one of Ballard FC’s chants. The beer is a 5.5% ABV pale ale made with Chinook, Cascade, HBC 1019 and Cashmere hops.
Camden Francis, the executive director of Ballard FC, said his management group reached out to Reuben’s before the team even existed to see if they wanted to be a sponsor and sure enough, the brewery became one the team’s first.
Larger regional breweries seem to dominate attention on the MLS front.
SweetWater works with the Atlanta United FC team and brews a 6.8% IPA called Rowdy Peach IPA available in distribution, at the games, and throughout the city. The team has a rabid fanbase and is famously known for winning the MLS cup after only its second season.
“In Atlanta specifically, there’s a strong sense of hometown pride and grassroots energy among fans. We know fans love drinking beer, and they love supporting local businesses,” says Patrick Clark, sponsorship and experiential senior manager for SweetWater Brewing Co., which is owned by Tilray. “As one of Atlanta’s longest-standing craft breweries that’s been based in the city since we were founded in 1997, it made a lot of sense for us to get involved with the team and connect with the Atlanta community.”
But why do soccer and beer work so well together? One reason Robbings points to is that soccer is rooted in English pub culture. If anyone has watched the popular “Welcome to Wrexham” television show on FX, the team pub is literally right outside the gates of the stadium and is the lifeblood of everything that transpires on and off the pitch. Similar to the quintessential American tailgate, British fans go to the pub for a pint before going to the game.
“You meet friends in the pub before you go to your seats, people start chanting in the pub, and then you go to the game,” Robbings says. “It’s intrinsically part of the experience.”
Francis thinks it’s the attention to details on and off the field that brokers a kinship with craft beer.
“Whether it’s the true craftsmanship it takes to create the perfect craft brew, or build up on the pitch to a goal, I think there is a good chunk of fans who recognize the innate beauty in those processes — and perhaps know too they couldn’t do it themselves necessarily, so they can appreciate it all the more as a spectator and/or consumer,” says Francis. “More simply put another way, drinking a good beer with friends on a beautiful day enjoying a game? It’s hard to get better than that — just on a human level.”
This article was made possible by Revolution Brewing, which believes in a free and independent press. Through its sponsorship of All About Beer, the brewery ensured that the creators behind this content were compensated for their work. Great beer needs great journalism and brewers and supporters like Revolution Brewing make that possible. Learn more about how you can help journalism in the beer space and All About Beer here.