HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. — When Norse fans watch or attend a Northern Kentucky University sporting event, OneHolland Group wants their beverage of choice to be “Norse Up.”
In early November, OneHolland, the owner of Wilder-based Barleycorn’s Brewhouse, unveiled a new light lager called Norse Up. What sets the beer apart from other Barleycorn’s Brewhouse products is its connection to NKU’s athletic department.
Norse Up is the official beer of NKU athletics, with 10% of each sale supporting the university’s student athletes through Name, Image, and Likeness funding. It’s NKU’s first NIL product in history, said Jay Shelton, CEO of Barleycorn’s.
Shelton told LINK nky that Barleycorn’s and OneHolland have been longtime partners and supporters of NKU athletics. As a result, he believed their brewery could develop a unique product to boost the university’s NIL offerings.
“It was just this natural extension with our dialogue with NKU athletics to say, ‘hey, you know, we’d be more than happy to take up the mantle of coming up with an NIL beer,’” Shelton said.
University-branded beers are not a new concept in the expansive NIL landscape. Across the Ohio River, the University of Cincinnati’s athletic department, in collaboration with Cincinnati-based Rhinegeist, launched Cincy Light in 2023, with the goal of creating a fundraising stream for the university’s student-athletes through NIL. Other universities, such as Iowa, Minnesota and Rutgers, offer fans a branded beer through local breweries.
By selling a specialty beer, universities can directly connect with fans, students, and alumni by offering a tangible product. As a product, beer has a storied history in fan culture, often being present at tailgates, house parties, or sold within stadiums and arenas.
The beer effectively acts as a marketing tool, promoting the school’s identity by displaying the team’s logos, colors and slogans in grocery stores and alcohol retailers throughout the region.
For breweries, which already thrive off community loyalty and narrative storytelling, the beer introduces their brand to new audiences who may not otherwise seek out their products. The beer ties the brewery to the local university, allowing the business to associate itself with community pride.
“That we really wanted to do–the big part–is really unite the NKU alumni fan base and the greater NKU support that we have all across the region,” Shelton said. “We really want to create a beer that really kind of signifies the pride in the school that we all share
Barleycorn’s Brewhouse head brewer, Shane Trego, said the goal was to create a craft beer with a light taste to make it accessible and ubiquitous for all fans.
“They (NKU) wanted to have something that’s approachable–live body,” Trego said. “What we did, we basically took a premium two-row grain, and we added in some of the traditional German hops. It’s a dual-purpose hops, so we were able to get to get the bitterness where we needed to have it, not too much, not too little and add a little bit of aroma at the end of this.”
Being a mid-major school, NKU doesn’t have the same level of funding for athletics as large universities like the University of Texas or Ohio State University.
In the NIL era, where athletic departments draw from large pools of money to compete for players, mid-major schools must get creative to stay competitive against other mid-major programs. Products like NIL beers offer an innovative method to raise funds for NIL while simultaneously engaging fans.
“If we can create that signature beer across Northern Kentucky in the greater region the NKU faithful can raise one up to toast in their homes or at sporting events that they’re at, and other things that now all of a sudden, we both increase the opportunity to really drive meaningful funds, but also just raise the pride and the awareness of just being a Norse fan, a Norse student and Norse alum,” Shelton said.
People can find Norse Up at Truist Arena in Highland Heights, Barleycorn’s Brewhouse in Wilder, and at Barleycorn’s locations in Cold Spring, Florence, and Lakeside Park. It is also available in cans at Party Town, NKY Good Spirits locations, Party Source, Spear Ridge Café, and Uncorked.
LINK nky is a media partner of WCPO.com.
