When the remake of the 1989 movie Road House was being released in March, Conor McGregor, one of its stars, didn’t pass up the opportunity to garner publicity for his drinks brand. At the cast photoshoot the mixed martial arts fighter presented his co-stars, who included the Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal, with cans of Forged Irish Stout. Some family members arrived at the London premiere with four-packs in hand.
After making a killing in 2021 with the reported $600 million sale of Eire Born Spirits, maker of his Proper No Twelve whiskey brand, McGregor re-entered the drinks ring last year with the launch of Forged stout.
Since then he has been advertising the brand at every opportunity and putting it up to the undisputed world champion of stout, Guinness.
In a video to promote Forged on St Patrick’s Day, McGregor said that it was “the only Irish stout, unlike those other little snakes in the grass”. Echoing his catchphrase, he insists that the brand is not here to take part, but “take over”.
Alan Geraghty, chief executive of McGregor Sports & Entertainment, says Forged is “very special” to McGregor, one of the world’s richest sports stars. “It was his idea and we went to great lengths to ensure we could produce the world’s finest stout,” he said.
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“In less than one year since we launched, we have double-digit growth every month.”
The idea for Forged came about when McGregor enlisted the craft brewer Porterhouse to produce a stout for his Black Forge Inn pub in Crumlin, Dublin 12. McGregor liked the flavour, so figured he could sell it to a wider customer base.
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He bought Porterhouse brewery from Liam LaHart last year for an undisclosed sum. At the time Porterhouse was making about 10,000 hectolitres of stout a year, the equivalent of about 1.7 million pints.
The Sunday Times understands that McGregor’s company has carried out capital improvements and has taken on extra staff, increasing production to 30,000 hectolitres this year. Eventually that could treble if Forged moves to a 24-hour, seven-day operation.
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Guinness’s St James’s Gate brewery has the capacity to produce seven million hectolitres a year. McGregor has some way to go before he “takes over”.
Yet there is no doubt that the fighter has a nose for the commercial zeitgeist. Guinness became the UK’s most popular draught beer last year, overtaking lager brands. Last week the UK pub chain JD Wetherspoon reported an increase in sales due to younger people drinking Guinness.
Tim Martin, chairman of Wetherspoons, said: “The gods of fashion have smiled upon Guinness, previously consumed by blokes my age but now widely adopted by younger generations.”
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Such words must be music to McGregor’s ears. Forged is distributed in the UK through LWC Drinks, the UK’s largest independent drinks wholesaler. It is sold in Asda stores and has started to build up its presence in British pubs, with about 2,500 on-premise accounts.
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Last October the company launched in a handful of American states and it has gone into retailers in Canada. The strategy is to etch deals with the off-licence trade before going into bars. In Ireland, the chocolatey stout is sold in SuperValu stores, Circle K garages, Carry Out off-licences, and a range of independent retailers and pubs.
America, where McGregor’s fame and pulling power is greatest, will be a tough market to crack. The craft beer segment there has become saturated, hitting an all-time high of nearly 10,000 breweries last year.
“Many craft producers have found it desperately challenging to gain a foothold or any degree of momentum in the USA,” said Alf Smiddy, who spent more than 20 years working in the beer business, including stints as chairman and chief executive of Beamish & Crawford.
The stout was sold only in Cork city up until 1990. Smiddy also launched Beamish into Dublin, taking on Guinness, and internationally. He also launched Miller and Foster’s in the Irish market.
“You certainly need lots of guts and determination in the world of beer, and despite the glamour, new product development and launching new beers is not for the faint-hearted,” Smiddy said.
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McGregor has a huge marketing head start: a global and devoted social media following and a successful track record. His Instagram and Twitter accounts, with 48 million and 10.4 million followers respectively, offer wall-to-wall advertising for his commercial interests.
Proper No Twelve, the UFC fighter’s whiskey brand, was launched into the market in 2018 and within two years had jumped into the top four Irish whiskey brands, trailing only Jameson, Tullamore Dew and Bushmills — Proper No Twelve was made at the Bushmills distillery in Antrim.
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In 2021 the Tequila maker Becle swooped for the brand, netting McGregor a reported $130 million.
Stout is not whiskey, however. When Becle bought Proper No Twelve, practically every multinational spirits company worthy of the name was looking to add an Irish whiskey to its portfolio. Even allowing for stout’s resurgence, the same simply cannot be said about global brewers’ appetite for black beer, at least not yet.
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“The international graveyard is littered with failed beer and alcoholic drinks brands,” Smiddy said.
McGregor does not need to look too far for a headstone. Heineken’s marketing muscle wasn’t enough to save Island’s Edge, a much-hyped stout that was launched in the Irish market in 2021 and withdrawn last year. The ill-fated venture is estimated to have cost €20 million.
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“Anyone contemplating launching a beer brand would be well advised to do it with their eyes wide open and have deep pockets,” Smiddy said.
When building Proper No Twelve, McGregor enlisted Ken Austin, a drinks industry veteran, and the American drinks executive Brian Axelrod. Both have gone on to set up their own companies. Austin co-founded House of Delola, which makes alcoholic cocktails, with the singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, while Axelrod has founded Chica-Chida, a tequila brand.
For Forged, the team is in-house and local. McGregor Sports & Entertainment is headed by the chief executive Geraghty, who spent four years as partner at Copsey Murray accountants after 12 years at Friel Stafford before joining McGregor in 2019.
Iain Wood, a former manager at Diageo and ex-head of operations at the whiskey maker Teeling, is operations director, joining from Porterhouse.
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Recently the company appointed Jonathan Courtenay as head of brand. Courtenay previously headed up his family’s JACC Sports Distributors, which supplied kit to the Ireland national soccer team and went bust in 2022.
Yet McGregor is the key figure. “Celebrity involvement can be a powerful marketing tool, particularly for reaching a broader audience quickly and creating initial buzz,” Smiddy said.
However, Julian Wild, corporate finance director of the law firm Rollits in the UK, says fame is no guarantee of prolonged success.
Wild, who has more than 40 years’ experience putting deals together in the drinks industry, said it could be difficult to get longevity in the celebrity-backed drinks market.
“For example, Prime, which was a hugely successful soft drink that was launched by Logan Paul and KSI and had sales of about $148 million last year, completely bombed this year,” he said.
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For Smiddy, the long-term success of the brand will depend on the quality of the product and sustained marketing efforts beyond the celebrity’s star power.
Forged has sponsored a range of fighters, including Katie Taylor and Anthony Joshua, and pointedly is also taking a punt on rugby, recently signing up as the sponsor of New England Free Jacks, a rugby union team in Boston. Guinness’s sponsorship of the rugby Six Nations tournament is seen as a key plank of recent success.
It is understood that Forged has developed two lagers, but the focus for now is establishing the stout. There is also an alcohol-free recipe in the pipeline — hardly surprising given the growing success of Guinness 0.0.
One veteran adman said people drank Guinness “because of its heritage”. McGregor has some catching up to do on a 265-year history.
Wild says that McGregor is probably not really expecting to “take over”. If he can garner a decent share of the $13.4 billion global stout market, he may attract interest from a large beer company.
“He probably thinks if he can at least get some sort of clientele, or some sort of following, then it makes it worthwhile to do,” he said.
Geraghty insists the mixed martial arts fighter is there for the long haul. “Growing a business takes capital, a good team and patience,” he said. To make Forged a success, McGregor will need all three.
McGregor’s corner men
“Few people are really aware of the range of businesses that Conor McGregor is involved in,” Alan Geraghty, chief executive of McGregor Sports & Entertainment, said. “He is a very hands-on owner.”
The company now employs 150 people across its bars, brewery and head office in the old Nostra building in Lucan, west Dublin — McGregor has also brought some of his childhood friends into the business alongside professional managers.
The office’s commercial property business is led by David McGoldrick, a former commercial director at First Citizen Finance. The wealth manager John Paul Keane left the Luxembourg bank Quintet to take up a role as chief investment officer.
McGregor’s business interests range from property development and pubs to mixed martial arts training apps. His film production company, Claymore, for example, recently shot a Nike ad in which the fighter starred.
The Black Forge Inn in Crumlin, which opened in 2021, is his flagship pub, attracting celebrities in their droves. The singer Olly Murs ate there when he was performing in Dublin last month, and the rapper Snoop Dogg and the comedian Kevin Hart have also popped out to Dublin 12 on visits.
It has yet to turn a profit. Latest accounts show it had accumulated losses of €2 million.
McGregor has bought a number of other pubs, which are under development. Last month a plan to turn the Waterside pub in Howth into a 35-bedroom hotel and bar was rejected by Fingal county council.
He has also run into planning delays with the development of the Marble Arch in the Dublin suburb of Drimnagh. Last week An Bord Pleanala refused planning permission for 113 apartments, a bar and retail unit on the site. Construction has already started on 188 apartments on the adjoining site.
McGregor’s team is believed to have been in discussions to buy the Wild Duck in Temple Bar — a high-profile tourist location, with upper floors, would suit McGregor down to the ground — but the sale fell out of bed and in recent weeks the Wild Duck was put on the market, guiding €8 million.
Geraghty refused to confirm that but said: “We absolutely envision opening more public houses in Ireland and expanding further into hospitality.”
McGregor’s future Irish pubs won’t bear the Black Forge name but international ones will.
Geraghty added that the group would be “bringing this Irish experience and the Black Forge Inn to other countries”.
McGregor has also bought into the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, which is backed by Triller, a TikTok-style social media company. Triller has just undergone a $4 billion merger with AGBA, a Hong Kong financial services company.
