About Us
Battle Of The Breweries was formed in 2018 by Joe Swatland and Ellie Swatland, with the introduction of Charlie Osborne in 2020. We officially launched the game and Trading Cards in 2021.
The idea for the business came along just after Joe had returned to the UK after living in New Zealand, where he had been approached by a brewery to help with import into the UK once they found out he was leaving.
After looking into the potential of import, it became apparent that the task was too difficult and expensive for him alone at that point, but he was still desperate to help promote the brewery in the UK where he possibly could. Using magazines, forums, Social Media and so on seemed to be an expensive and often fruitless form of advertising that would only target a small portion of the overall market, and everything looked the same, so he began to think of other alternative ways of shouting about his favourite beers and people.
A link between gaming and beer drinking became obvious shortly after, as he enjoyed food, game and beer nights with friends and often played card games with friends while at craft bars and pubs.
He would collect Trading Cards when he was younger and still bought the World Cup and Euros football sticker album, despite never having completed one. He used Untappd whenever he had a beer, but not to rate, just to enjoy. He would visit bottle shops, bars and pubs and try as many different beers, purely for the enjoyment of trying something new each time, but he knew very little about each individual brewery unless they were on his doorstep.
And so, Battle Of The Breweries was born. An idea based on his passion for the industry, that meant that he could collect trading cards, play a card game with his friends and learn all about a brewery and it's beers in the most simple of ways.
Alternatively, this gave an amazing marketing and advertising opportunity to breweries in every corner of the world. They could advertise their brand, share their logo, let everyone know who their founders are and also entice people into trying their beer. All of this advertising would go out to tens of thousands of their key target market with little to no work for themselves, for a fraction of the advertising costs they'd usually pay and for a far higher consumer recognition rate. A large amount of work has gone into figuring out how to maximise each breweries advertising potential, and in turn, how that can make the collectors experience even better, and we believe that the foundations that we've set out are the perfect combination for both parties.
Mixed together, we believe Battle Of The Breweries perfectly typifies the modern beer drinker and works exceptionally well in helping to benefit the already amazing community the industry has.
We genuinely absolutely love what we do. We've met a heap of incredible people already, from brewers to collectors/gamers, and we can't wait to see just how far we can take Battle Of The Breweries with you.
We'll be doing a lot of touring around the UK, Europe and the US in our first year, followed by a larger expansion into all other countries shortly after, and we'd love to hear from you if you'd like to partner with us to bring Battle Of The Breweries to your local regions.