10 Barrel, Widmer & Hop Valley Land Trail Blazers Craft Beer Deal

Three Oregon craft beer brands — 10 Barrel Brewing, Widmer Brothers, and Hop Valley — have been named official craft beer partners of the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers, deepening the on-premise footprint of Anheuser-Busch InBev's craft portfolio in one of the country's most beer-literate markets. Notably, 10 Barrel also becomes the Trail Blazers' first official canned cocktail partner, a designation that signals growing RTD (ready-to-drink) penetration into major-venue programming.

Oregon Brands, NBA Venue

The partnership places all three labels — each rooted in the Pacific Northwest and operating under AB InBev's craft umbrella — across Moda Center's concession points and extends into the Rip City Bar Network, a constellation of affiliated on-premise accounts tied to the Trail Blazers' brand. For distributors and wholesalers servicing the Portland metro, the deal creates a structured depletion pull across both the arena and its extended bar network, reinforcing SKU presence at high-visibility, high-velocity venues during the NBA season.

Canned cocktails have been among the fastest-growing segments in the broader beverage alcohol category, and 10 Barrel's RTD line now gains a flagship sports venue as a showcase account. Arena and stadium placements carry outsized influence on consumer trial and regional brand awareness — particularly for RTD formats that benefit from cold-chain ready, single-serve convenience in high-traffic settings. Securing the "first official" designation in that canned cocktail category at a major NBA arena is a meaningful route-to-market signal for the RTD segment broadly.

Pacific Northwest Market Context

Oregon has long ranked among the most competitive craft beer markets in the United States, with Portland regularly cited as a high-index craft consumption market. Widmer Brothers, one of the founding names of the Pacific Northwest craft movement, and Hop Valley, which built its base in Eugene before expanding distribution regionally, both bring strong local brand equity to the partnership. Pairing them with 10 Barrel's canned cocktail positioning allows AB InBev's craft division to cover multiple dayparts and drinking occasions within a single venue deal.

For wholesalers and distributors covering the Oregon three-tier system, arena partnerships of this structure typically translate into guaranteed tap lines, cold-box placement, and promotional programming commitments — all of which support volume consistency during the roughly five-month regular season. The Rip City Bar Network extension broadens those depletion opportunities beyond the arena footprint into neighborhood on-premise accounts, a multiplier effect that makes the sponsorship commercially meaningful well past game nights.

This move aligns with broader craft beer distribution trends where regional brewers are leveraging sports venue deals to defend shelf and tap position against national lager brands and the growing RTD and hard seltzer category, which continues to compete for cold-box real estate and event pour rights across the country.

Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.