The Swarm Collective announces SWARM Golden Ale to benefit NIL deals

The Swarm Collective announced Tuesday it has partnered with the Des Moines, Iowa-based Exile Brewing Company to brew a custom-brewed beer called SWARM Golden Ale. According to a news release, Exile Brewing Company will contribute 20% of the revenue to The Swarm Collective, which funds name, image and likeness opportunities for Iowa athletes.

“All of that depends on how much Hawkeye fans get behind the beer, you know. It all depends on Hawkeye nation, really,” Exile Brewing Company owner and co-founder R.J. Tursi said in a phone interview, when how large of a contribution The Swarm Collective could potentially receive. “We have lots of runway down here at Exile to make really tens of thousands of cases of this beer and 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.”

Swarm Collective is second collective to co-brand beer

The Swarm Collective is the second NIL collective to partner with a local brewing for a custom beer that results in donations to a collective. The Horseshoe Collective, which supports Boise State athletes, announced in April the launch of The Horseshoe Golden Ale in conjunction with the Western Collective brewery.

Western Collective founder Cary Prewitt told On3 the brewery will donate 10 cents to the collective for every pint sold. Prewitt said Western Collective hopes to sell 10,000 cases in the first year, which would translate to $24,000 in contributions to the collective.

SWARM Golden Ale will be available in late July in restaurants, entertainment venues, retail stores and in Exile Brewing Company’s taproom, according to the news release.

“Something like this is the reason why we got into craft beer to begin with,” Tursi said. “It’s collaborative, and it’s innovative. It’s in support of something that we love and we just really hope that Iowans and Hawkeye nation get behind it.”

Pilot batch of SWARM Golden Ale to be ready soon

Tursi said Exile Brewing Company started brewing SWARM Golden Ale last week. He expects the pilot batch of the beer to be ready Friday.

“We’ll do our process we do with all of our new beers,” Tursi said. “We write down the sensory experience that we want the beer to produce. So then on Friday, what we’ll do is we’ll sample the beer and we’ll see if it lines up with that sensory experience and if it doesn’t, then we’ll adjust it.”

Executives from the collective and the brewery discussed factors such as the type of beer and its alcohol by volume. Tursi said Exile Brewing Company made suggestions to The Swarm Collective, whose executives then responded. The parties involved ultimately agreed on the beer profile of SWARM Golden Ale, which the news release described as “easy-drinking, well-balanced, clean, and tailgate ready.”

Tursi said Exile Brewing Company will price SWARM Golden Ale in line with the rest of its beers that are available in its taproom. A 12-pack at a grocery store might cost $1 to $2 more than “your typical craft beer out there, but we’ll see,” Tursi said. “It all depends on the retailer.” A bar that caters to Iowa fans could choose not to mark up the sales price.

Will SWARM Golden Ale be available in Iowa athletic venues?

“We sure hope that it would be sold in those areas,” Tursi said. “The sales process to those accounts is pretty involved and there’s no guarantees as far as what we’re doing that we’re going to be into those locations but I would hope that they would see the value in selling the beer there.

“In theory, with the way that NIL is going right now, the reason we wanted to be involved with this is because NIL is new but we believe that the success of collegiate athletics at the highest level is going to be directly tied to the success of their NIL, the NIL that is linked to that athletic program and we want to be a part of that. We would hope that these major accounts that depend on the success of the athletic programs would see it the same way and would want to support the product.”

Brewery views revenue share ‘almost like a marketing expense’

The Swarm Collective is a nonprofit corporation that received a determination letter from the IRS last June that it’s a public charity. The collective supports Iowa football and men’s and women’s basketball players, each of whom partnered with the collective in the 2022-23 school year and had the opportunity to receive at least roughly $10,000, according to CEO Brad Heinrichs.

In January, Elite Casino Resorts pledged $500,000 to The Swarm Collective and the company became the “exclusive casino gaming partner” of the collective. The collective defended the partnership in light of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation’s ongoing sports wagering investigation that involves individuals affiliated with Iowa and Iowa State.

“There was a lot of negotiating and back and forth with The Swarm group, but for us at the end of the day, we really see the value in this beer being able to help The Swarm Collective and in turn make life better for the student-athlete at the University of Iowa,” Tursi said. “We’re really viewing that 20% revenue share as almost like a marketing expense because you know, we know that there are so many Hawkeye fans in the state of Iowa. We feel like if they know that the beer they are drinking is going to benefit the student-athletes at the University of Iowa that they’ll be loyal to it. There’s no clear path to do that for any one given brand but we felt like because of the charitable aspect of it, it was achieving that for us.”