New beer coming to Husky stadium exclusively to help fund NIL

Amid all the changes the University of Washington (UW) is undergoing with its football program this season — new coaching staff, new conference, new players, new playoff format — fans will have the opportunity to taste a new beer from Redhook Brewery sold exclusively within Husky Stadium.

The beer, the Redhook Montlake Gameday Gold Lager, is a “bright, easy-drinking lager” with 5%-AbV per 16-ounce can. While currently exclusive to the stadium, UW has teased that it will be available in stores locally “soon.”

“The Redhook Montlake Gameday Gold Lager is the official beer of Montlake Futures,” UW stated in its update on new upgrades to its football gamedays. “Each can purchased helps support the NIL collective that serves student-athletes at the University of Washington.”

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Montlake Futures is the NIL (name, image, likeness) collective that serves student-athletes at the university by seeking out and developing NIL opportunities. NIL refers to the rights of college athletes to control and profit from their name, image and likeness, according to Next College Student Athlete. In the past, these rights were restricted by the NCAA, but recent policy changes now allow athletes to monetize their personal brand and endorsements while participating in college sports.

How Montlake Futures works in the era of NIL

Through individual donations, fan memberships and corporate sponsors, Montlake Futures provides support all student-athletes on campus. Montlake Futures is not a University of Washington entity, merely a nonprofit sponsor of UW Athletics. Any donation to Montlake Futures can be assigned to a specific sport and is tax-deductible.

While student-athletes can still close NIL deals without the help of a collective, Montlake Futures wants to develop NIL opportunities that benefit the local community.

“NIL is here to stay and in order for the UW to remain competitive, there must be NIL opportunities available for our student-athletes,” Patrick Crumb, a founding adviser to Montlake Futures and former board president of the UW Alumni Association, told UW Magazine. “That’s why we formed Montlake Futures — to provide UW student-athletes with the opportunity to receive compensation for their time and the value of their name, image and likeness. That having been said, it was always important to those of us in the founding group that we go about it the right way, in a way consistent with UW values.”

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As of March 2023, Montlake Futures has funded nearly 200 deals and facilitated nearly an additional 100 deals.

According to The Athletic, Montlake Futures was a crucial part in the retention of the 2023 UW football team. Quarterback Michael Penix Jr., wide receivers Jalen McMillan and Rome Odunze, pass rushers Bralen Trice and Zion Tupuola-Fetui and offensive tackle Troy Fautanu all decided to stay at UW for one more season to compete for the national title instead of transferring out of declaring for the NFL draft.

Why? Because the instant payday that comes with professional sports is hard to turn down. So Montlake Futures closed NIL deals with all six players to keep them around for one more season — deals more lucrative than what the NFL contract would have been declaring a year early.

After one more season at UW, Penix, Odunze and Fautanu were all drafted in the first round of the 2024 draft, while Trice and McMillan were selected in the third round.

“Shoutout to Montlake Futures,” Fautanu told The Athletic. “Those guys have done a really good job of helping us out.”

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Now with UW in the Big Ten Conference competing against some of the largest football programs in the NCAA, every bit from Montlake Futures helps.

Frank Sumrall is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here and you can email him here.