Wrestling With IPA
India Pale Ales fueled the rise of the craft beer industry as we know it today, not terribly different from how “the Attitude Era” led by The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin built today’s version of professional wrestling. But just like when the WWE’s ratings slide due to lackluster storylines and depleted star power, IPA sales currently find themselves in a slump. On March 1st, I worked to bring these two art forms together by joining forces with Warrior Wrestling, an independent promotion, to put on an absolute spectacle of a show that nobody in attendance will forget. The entire build up toward the event, behind-the-scenes planning & logistics, and execution on the big night helped reframe how I’m going to look at IPA from here on out.
Pro Wrestling and IPAs have a lot more in common than you’d think and embracing these similarities could turn the tables on a brewery’s fate.
Styles - Just like there’s different styles of wrestlers including Lucha libres, Technicians, Brawlers, High Flyers, and Submission wrestlers, there’s different styles within IPA including West Coast, Hazy, Black, Cold, and New Zealand. In both cases, fans prefer a mix of styles . Just like wrestling promotors seek a balanced card for a show, breweries seek a balanced menu for their Taproom. With both, there’s proven winning formulas and those who try to push the boundaries. Often, those new attempts fall flat while every once in awhile one breaks through and turns the industry upside down.
Size - Wrestlers come in all shapes and sizes, each providing it’s own nuances that further diversify a night of wrestling matches, and IPAs are no different. There’s low ABV Session IPAs and Pale Ales for consumers who “want to have a few”, the prototypical IPA which I compare to technical wrestlers who seek a perfect balance, then there’s the big bruising Imperial IPAs for fans seeking maximum impact.
Gimmicks - While it’s conceivable for a wrestler to be so purely talented that they simply go by their first and last name, without any gimmicks or stage names, most add a little flair to enhance the character. To add depth to the character, some schticks go to extremes and add an element of comic relief to a show, helping broaden the appeal so that it’s not all serious. Similarly, many IPA fans prefer a pure, technically sound American or West Coast IPA, while others tune in for the experimentation, playfulness, and theatrics.
Story-telling - The WWE is the longest running episodic program in television history and their continued relevance isn’t attributed to being satisfied with past accomplishments. Wrestling is a “what have you done for me lately?” business, just like IPAs are all about “what’s next?”. No matter how great an episode of Raw or how perfectly Wrestlemania was executed, diehard fans are tuning in to see what happens next. Similarly, IPA’s best days were when it was playing out like chapters in a book, telling an ever-evolving story. Some chapters were quick, like the Brut IPA, and some better than others, but regardless of one’s favorites, they all built toward a long drawn-out story.
Tag Teaming - For all breweries, especially those making IPAs, collaborations are a common way to combine two personalities and give fans of both a chance to see two mega powers collide. Wrestling uses tag team matches to change up the flow and dynamics of the card, adding new variables and combining individual characters onto the same team for a fresh narrative to a match.
Hype - Nobody’s going to exceed their expectations without a little hype behind them. Wrestlers “cut promos”, essentially talking smack to the camera leading up to their big matches. In addition to the great story-telling leading up to that point, the extra build-up adds to the FOMO of not wanting to miss this chapter. Similarly, brewery’s are challenged with making sure each new release in a series is compelling, using social media as the primary vehicle so that their loyal fans won’t want to miss the next release.
Mixing Work and Play
I’m a believer that a long lasting and happy career in the beer industry requires occasionally being able to put your own personality, interests, and/or ambitions into the job. That could mean being part of a beer’s development, helping organize a unique customer-facing event, or even influencing a culture-building activity with colleagues. For me, it’s always been our Hero IPAs at Revolution, which along with many of my colleagues, have expressed our pop culture passion in the form of an entire universe of characters that includes of course, wrestling.
In 2021, we finally got access to enough Nelson hops to create an appropriately named Nelson-Hero in our widely distributed League of Heroes variety pack. But what would that character look like? Nelson from the Simpsons got a few Haaaa Haaaaa’s, but no serious consideration. My campaign for a wrestling-themed Nelson character, alluding to the like-named submission hold got everyone’s approval. Or perhaps they just saw the twinkle in my eye and couldn’t say no. Regardless, we ended up with the first wrestling-themed 12-pack that chain retailers have ever seen.
Like the latest edition of any comic book series, this particular “issue” of the League of Heroes would eventually be overtaken by a new story. A one-off, Double Dry-Hopped version of Nelson-Hero would follow in 2022 that landed enough punches to be brought back in 2024 for a re-match. Returning an IPA that already has a recipe, existing artwork, and selling materials provides a lot of efficiencies, but these advantages don’t provide anything for the fans looking for something new. Unless, of course, Nelson could find a way to move up the ranks, into a new arena, and on a bigger stage.
Go Big or Go Home
A one-off, limited release can only receive so much marketing time, attention, and budget. The beer is hopefully here and gone before you know it, so it shouldn’t divert an excessive amount of staff time and focus. That notion can change however if multiple company objectives are woven together, which happen to tie into the goals of a beer release. During the last quarter of 2023, a lot of negativity was swirling through the industry due to softening sales trends. Fans and industry members were questioning whether “craft beer” had run out of steam and lost its cool. I heard calls both internally and externally to return the culture to more of the grassroots marketing that we used to see, when “craft beer” was on it’s meteoric rise. Challenge accepted…
Putting together a wrestling show is not dissimilar from a music festival in the sense that different wrestlers are different draws. The bigger the star power, the higher the costs, but the more interest there will be from fans and then the more you can charge for tickets. The economics is actually quite fascinating. Thankfully, Chicago is a centralized location with a ton of talent locally that helped avoid travel costs and land many stars including Mustafa Ali for the Main Event, who had just left WWE after an 8+ year run.
I sort of shoved this show into a very busy time of year, as we were focused on our biggest new brand launch maybe ever in Cold Time and a bunch of exciting new sports sponsorships that are beginning to go public. After a few key employees had left recently, we needed some cultural “glue” that would bring many departments together, including our Marketing, Taproom, Operations, and Private Events teams, to figure this new challenge out. In the process of bringing hundreds of new fans to the brewery for a one-of-a-kind event, we got to show our employees how local breweries can still think big and take their fans somewhere new.
Turning Heel
Spending too much time around industry members and beer fans who have been into beer for a decade+ could make one think that people are tired of IPAs. This is a dangerous echo chamber to be influencing strategic decisions. Before declaring IPAs dead, remember that Hazy and Imperial are still growing through it all and the style still makes up an insane majority of the industry’s sales. Sometimes the WWE needs to change up their creative writing team and move on from certain wrestlers into order to get fresh, engaging storylines and talent, setting themselves up for a new run.
Breweries should look in the mirror at their softening IPA sales and question the thought and energy put forth these last few years. Are fans moving on, or are they just less inspired by a current lull in IPA’s story? Perhaps it’s time for IPA to finally find that next wave of energy, tune out certain voices, embrace the boos, fine tune its character, and write the next chapter whether that’s as the hero, the villain, or…
For more from the perspective of Warrior Wrestling who we partnered with to put on this awesome show, check out Dom’s substack
Doug, I really appreciate the line about the industry echo chamber around IPA. The style is far from dead, and lager has about a decade more "Year of the Lager" headlines before it catches up. Great perspective on the style that still pays the bills.
Wonderful integrations and insights, Doug!