Cincinnati NIL collective Cincy Reigns launches beer with Rhinegeist

The Cincinnati-focused name, image and likeness collective Cincy Reigns has announced a co-branded beer in partnership with Rhinegeist Brewery. The lager is called Cincy Light, which will be 4.2% ABV. The can will feature Cincy Reigns’s name, Rhinegeist Brewery’s logo and Cincinnati colors. There will also be a QR code on the back of the can that will redirect consumers to the collective’s website.

Cincy Light will be available in Cincinnati within Rhinegeist Brewery’s self-distribution network “in time for the start of football season, so it’ll be out late fall,” Rhinegeist Brewery interim CEO Adam Bankovich said Tuesday afternoon at a press conference held at Rhinegeist Brewery.

Cincy Reigns will receive $2 from every case sold, plus it will receive some of the revenue from pints sold in Rhinegeist Brewery’s taproom, according to Bankovich.

“We have said that there’s no stone that we’re gonna leave unturned in order to do whatever we can to benefit, support and grow the NIL ecosystem at the University of Cincinnati,” Cincy Reigns founder Brian Fox said.

Fox said Cincy Reigns’s board will determine the allocation of the collective’s finances as it has previously. When asked during the press conference if he expects similar deals with other companies, Fox said, “Yes. Oh, yeah. So if you’re a large business out there and you’re looking for a way to make a difference – Hey, we’re here and we want to help you.”

Cincy Light ‘fits a need state’ for Rhinegeist

During the press conference, one of the tanks behind the lectern featured the Cincy Reigns logo and Bankovich, who’s a Cincinnati alum, wore one of the collective’s t-shirts. He said 100% of the members of Rhinegeist Brewery’s design team are alums, too.

“This light lager is new to our portfolio,” Bankovich said. “We’ve never done a light lager commercially widely available before and it fits a need state that we feel the Rhinegeist fan and more importantly, the Cincinnati fan wants to have out on the market.”

He said Cincy Light was created with “quite a lot” of thought regarding a beer that fans might want to drink when tailgating.

“In addition to the co-branded beer, the partnership will feature exclusive fundraising events at Rhinegeist in support of Cincy Reigns and other community initiatives with other fans of Bearcats and beer,” according to a news release.

Rhinegeist has partnered with Cincinnati Athletics through an agreement with LEARFIELD’s Bearcats Sport Properties since 2013.

Cincy Reigns becomes the third collective with a co-branded beer

Cincy Reigns is the third NIL collective nationally to partner with a local brewery for a co-branded beer, which have the potential to result in five or six-figure annual contributions to a collective. Earlier on Tuesday, The Swarm Collective announced a partnership with the Des Moines, Iowa-based Exile Brewing Company, which will brew SWARM Golden Ale. The brewery will contribute 20% of all revenue to the collective in support of NIL opportunities for Iowa athletes.

“If we start getting up into those numbers – tens of thousands of cases or even more than that – if this beer gets on the level of popularity as like our most popular beer Ruthie, you’d be looking at a donation for The Swarm of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from Exile,” Exile Brewing Company owner R.J. Tursi told On3.

The Horseshoe Collective, which supports Boise State athletes, was the first collective to partner with a brewery. It announced The Horseshoe Golden Ale in conjunction with the Western Collective brewery. Founder Cary Prewitt told On3 the brewery will contribute 10 cents from every pint sold to The Horseshoe Collective.

Cincy Reigns prepares for Cincinnati’s move to Big 12

Cincinnati is less than two months away from officially joining the Big 12 Conference and conference realignment has at times been an emphasis in Cincy Reigns’s fundraising and messaging.

At the press conference, Dan Hoard, who serves as the voice of the Bearcats as the school’s play-by-play broadcaster, said, “We are 46 days away from one of the most important days in Bearcats history as Cincinnati joins the Big 12 on July 1st. That means that UC will finally have a seat at the table in the Power 5, meaning a dramatic increase in exposure for UC and for the city of Cincinnati, fairer access to the College Football Playoff and a significant boost in TV revenue.”

In March, Cincy Reigns announced the “Let’s Reign Campaign,” which established a goal of 7,000 donors who will commit $350 by July 1, which would total pledges of at least $2.45 million.

“We want to leave no stone unturned as we’re trying to be as creative as possible so that we can level up the support that we can provide to student-athletes, especially as we consider our jump to the Big 12 Conference in July,” Fox said.

Cincy Reigns launched last November. Fox registered Cincy Reigns, LLC, and Cincy Reigns, Inc., to provide two arms to the collective. The latter is a non-profit corporation.

“We wear the city’s name across our chests,” Cincinnati athletic director John Cunningham told On3 when Cincy Reigns publicly launched. “We have that piece to it. I know that we have passionate fans in these local businesses in the C-suites and higher that want this place to be successful so I imagine that they will find this collective and start to interact with it.”