Scottish craft brewery BrewDog is continuing to expand its reach beyond the beer category, today announcing the launch of a namesake streaming video service that features more than 100 hours of drinks-related content.
Called The BrewDog Network, a joint venture with Redtail Media founders Chris Burke and Jared Cotton, the SVOD (streaming video on demand) service will feature 14 original programs, including a reprise of the original “Brew Dogs” series that starred brewery founders Martin Dickie and James Watt and aired on the Esquire Network between 2013 and 2015.
“After our previous TV show Brew Dogs got cancelled, we didn’t want to sit around in our underpants, crying into a tub of ice cream,” Watt said via a press release. “So we decided the only thing to do would be to build our own TV network.”
In launching the new network, the pair also reeled in a number of personalities, including comedian Zane Lamprey — who co-founded Evolution Spirits, makers of Monkey Rum — and Parks and Recreation’s Alison Becker.
Lamprey will take another stab at drinking on camera via “Four Sheets,” a reboot of the “Three Sheets” series that aired on the Travel Channel in 2010. The network also acquired Lamprey’s “Drinking Made Easy” program, which ran on AXS TV for three seasons.
Other programs on the new streaming network, which can be purchased for $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year, include “Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person,” hosted by Becker, and Priceline pitchman William Shatner’s “Brown Bag Wine Tasting.”
The ad-free platform can be accessed via the web and mobile apps, and the company hopes to sell 50,000 subscriptions within the first six months, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Just as Netflix has pioneered mainstream streaming services, The BrewDog Network will be the first globally-recognized, passion-focused platform,” Watt said via the release. “We believe craft beer can be the inspiration for the most popular content on the internet – maybe even more popular than videos of cats falling off walls or celebrity sex tapes.”
Speaking of sex tapes, the private equity-backed “punks” at BrewDog, long known for relying on shock value and over-the-top gimmicks as a means for garnering attention for their company, opted to promote their new venture by simultaneously launching a PornHub-esque website (https://beer.porn) filled with sexual innuendos and an assortment of clips from their network’s shows.
Once on the “Beerporn” website, visitors are treated to sexually-titled clips such as “Nerdy brunette loves big cocktails” and “Three bad boys explode everywhere,” and all of the clips have a “69 percent” thumbs up rating.
Unsurprisingly, industry observers and some BrewDog shareholders took to Twitter to criticize the multinational company for its sophomoric marketing tactics.
Twitter user @beercrit replied to BrewDog’s tweet featuring a gif of an exploding bottle of beer – obviously intended to mimic a male ejaculation – by saying that he was “embarrassed” to be a shareholder.
Fellow Twitter user @ThingsByNik also replied to the same tweet, saying “I feel the same” and shared a gif of WWE chairman Vince McMahon wincing in pain.
Another user replied with a gif of a burning dumpster, colloquially known as a dumpster fire and defined by Merriam Webster as “an utterly calamitous or mismanaged situation or occurrence.”
Meanwhile, beer writer Carla Jean Lauter, who tweets under the handle @beerbabe, replied to BrewDog’s tweet with a string of messages slamming the beer company for its “sleasy (sic) inappropriate tone.”
“The butt of the jokes include men pretending to be women and being gay as a punchline,” she wrote. “Neither are particularly funny or land well. Gay and trans people aren’t punchlines.”
As of press time, Neither BrewDog nor Watt had publicly replied to any of the criticisms on Twitter.
BrewDog, which also opened its “DogHouse” Hotel in Columbus, Ohio this month, posted EBITDA of about $11 million on revenues of more than $144 million in 2017, according to its annual report. The company’s U.S. division, BrewDog USA, lost nearly $2 million last year, however.
As Brewbound reported in June, BrewDog is hoping to raise $10 million via its Equity for Punks U.S. crowdfunding campaign.
Additional details about The BrewDog Network can be found on the company’s website.