When the Chicago Fire launch new uniforms next year bearing the team’s crisp new logo in the colors of the Chicago flag, it’ll have a beer from Revolution Brewing to match.
Hazy Pitch, a pale ale packaged with the Fire’s name and in its red, white and light blue color scheme, will be the backbone of a four-year partnership announced Wednesday between an elder statesman of the city’s craft beer scene and the 24-year-old soccer franchise.
The marketing deal is meant to deepen Chicago ties for both parties: the Fire, which returned to Soldier Field last year from south suburban Bridgeview, and Revolution, which faces evermore competition in the city’s robust craft beer landscape.
The beer will debut on draft Oct. 20 at Revolution’s Kedzie Avenue taproom, while the brewery airs a Fire match against FC Cincinnati. Cans will be available in late January.
Revolution cans — including Hazy Pitch — note that the beers are “proudly brewed only in Chicago using pure Lake Michigan water.” That was a key selling point to the Fire, which has a craft beer sponsor for the first time in five years, said Kyle Sheldon, the team’s senior vice president of marketing. Lagunitas and Goose Island have previously held the rights, he said; Heineken will continue to be the team’s major beer sponsor.
“With Revolution, the thinking from the get-go was this company and brand have a presence in Chicago — they really are Chicago,” Sheldon said. “To be able to put our new identity and logo on cans through Chicago and to extend that reach, there’s a lot of value there.”
Hazy Pitch will be sold in and around Chicago in four-packs of 16-ounce cans in early 2022. Sheldon said he hopes the beer is also poured at Fire games, but noted the team has no control over concessions, “so it’s a discussion that will need to be had.” Revolution’s flagship IPA, Anti-Hero, is already poured at the stadium. The sides have been discussing the deal, and what the collaborative beer would be, since January.
Doug Veliky, Revolution’s chief strategy officer, said the Fire’s goal of deepening ties to Chicago was attractive to Revolution, and that the deal would have been less likely if the team was still playing in Bridgeview.
“The ethos of the team moving to Chicago — and something we’ve committed ourselves to is staying in Chicago — is definitely attractive,” he said. “We’re very proud to put ‘Brewed only in Chicago, and we purposely underlined the word ‘only.'”
Veliky said Revolution initially assumed a beer co-branded with a soccer team would be a lager, and the brewery weighed whether it should be a Mexican-style lager as a nod to the city’s large number of Latino soccer fans, or maybe a European-style brew as a nod to the sport’s supremacy on that continent.
But the brewery decided to pivot to its hop-forward strengths and take aim at a “more modern” style of soccer beer that remains on the lower end of the alcohol spectrum at 5%.
“It checked all the boxes — something you can have multiple of during a game, but would be something new to a lot of soccer fans who are open to craft beer but maybe aren’t submerged in the culture,” Veliky said. “Everyone agreed it made sense to make something different. We don’t want to blend in with what’s already heavily marketed to soccer fans, which is mostly light lager.”
The can is just as important as the beer to the partnership, which Veliky said could have featured a player but intentionally depicts the fan experience. The name of the beer includes a pair of double meanings relevant to both soccer and brewing. “Hazy” reflects the beer itself and the haze that can settle over a soccer field thanks to the flares used by fans during matches (but which are not allowed at Solider Field). “Pitch” is both a soccer field and what brewers do to yeast when making beer.
“The can is the centerpiece of the partnership,” Veliky said. “We’ll get other benefits — our logo on the field and on TV for a certain amount of time — but those are minor in comparison to what this is all about, which is making a beer together and combining our fan bases.”
Revolution brewmaster Jim Cibak said he has toyed with the idea of making a “crisp and effervescent” pale ale in the hazy style that has revolutionized craft beer in recent years. Many hazy beers are thick and occasionally cloying India pale ales. Cibak said he aimed to make a more approachable version, “something easy to drink and aromatic and makes you want to have more than one.”
But the brewery couldn’t find a place in its lineup for such a beer until the partnership with the Fire, Veliky said. Revolution’s Hazy Hero is the state’s biggest-selling hazy IPA, Veliky said, citing data from marketing research firm IRI.
“It’s one of our best growers right now, so a lower alcohol version makes sense,” he said.
Hazy Pitch will join Fist City pale ale and Rev Pils in the brewery’s “City Series” of beers sold largely in and around Chicago. It will replace Cross of Gold golden ale in the lineup, though that beer will remain a draft offering and in cans as the house beer for Parson’s Chicken & Fish restaurants.
The marketing deal is Revolution’s second with a Chicago sports team. With the end of the 2021 baseball season, Revolution finished a four-year deal with the White Sox that included branding a beer service area as the Revolution Brewing Sox Social Taproom.
Veliky said the brewery hopes to continue the relationship, even as its local brewing rival, Goose Island, is the team’s official craft beer sponsor and makes a Sox-branded golden ale.
Though the Fire has consistently finished at or near the bottom of Major League Soccer standings in recent years, Veliky said he sees striking a deal ahead of the team’s 2022 season as “getting in on the ground floor of something special.”
Fire owner Joe Mansueto, who bought majority ownership of the team in 2019, has said he wants to invest in a state-of-the-art practice facility in the city and strengthen the team’s talent.
Veliky said he sees a comparison to the state of the White Sox when Revolution signed that marketing deal in 2017.
“We see a big turn around ahead,” he said.
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