Qualifying Venues - State Steinholding Championship Tournaments

We're looking for venues to host Qualifying Round Competitions for our 2023 State Championship Tournaments! Learn more about the benefits and requirements for hosting a State Qualifier at your venue below. As always, we will have a limited number of Qualifying Venue registrations available in each state, so if you want to get in on the Steinholding action this summer and fall, register by choosing your state and hitting the "Add To Cart" button at the bottom of this page, or you could end up missing out.

What's in it for you and your venue?

Great question- there are a bunch of benefits to hosting a U.S. Steinholding Association State Championship Tournament Qualifying Competition:

• Steinholding competitions are among the best interactive promotional events you can host to engage your fans and attract new patrons to your venue, especially once you establish Steinholding as a yearly tradition and if you host a multi-round competition at your venue that will have people coming back for more.
• Registration grants you two competitor invitations for the State Finals- one for a men's representative and one for a women's representative. When you host your Qualifying Round competition, the competitors who win at your location are then invited to compete at the State Finals and represent your venue. We encourage you to hold multiple competitions if you want, but you'll have to find a way to identify the man and woman who will be your representatives for the state finals (such as best overall time, in-house tournament winner, etc.).
• You'll be getting cross-promotion for your venue from our State Championship partners and USSA through our Competition Map, State Championship pages, and our social media promotion of your venue's Steinholding events.
• The State Championship finalists will be competing for bigger prizes, the coveted state tournament trophy, and the title of State Champion, but they can only qualify by competing at a registered Qualifying Venue like yours.
• Your program registration comes with a TON of membership benefits including:
• Our extensive Competition Planning and Set-up Guide to walk you through hosting a competition and make it super easy for you to get started
• Our Official USSA Judging Manual to help train your judges by providing extra explanations of the rules and proper Steinholding form
• New for 2023: Access to monthly video calls with judging/rules demonstrations and Q&A during peak Steinholding season (from July to October, dates and times TBD). There's no substitute for seeing the rules and a demonstration of good form (and bad form) in action, and you'll have access to our Steinholding experts who will use their years of experience to help get you comfortable with the sport. We'll also have an open forum to ask questions about judging, competition planning logistics, or anything else Steinholding-related. Plus we'll have a replay available for you to watch on-demand!
• Specialized Member Venue icons on our Competition Maps
• Customizable templates for making posters and social media posts for your Steinholding events
• A 20% discount on any USSA-branded stein or merch purchases sold through our merch page
• Base pricing (at-cost pricing) on any apparel purchases through our Threadless page
• New for 2023: Refer-A-Friend bonus- We all know that Steinholding is awesome, but we can't get the word out 100% on our own, so we're asking for your help! If you refer a friend's venue to us (friends, frenemies, rivals, etc.), via an email introduction to us, once you both register as State Championship Qualifying Venues, we'll thank you with a $20 merchandise credit to be applied to your next purchase of any merch sold directly from our merch page (including steins, pint glasses, stickers, banners, pins, etc.)
• New for 2023: Access to co-branded and USSA logo banners- As a members-only benefit, we'll work with you to coordinate integration of our logos together or you can purchase USSA logo banners (see examples on our banner page here) and we'll have them shipped directly to your venue. It's a colorful and easy way to spruce up your competition space!
• ...and more!
• You can charge a competition entry fee for your qualifying round events to drive extra revenue, especially if you put together special "Steinholding Night" promotions or discounts for your Steinholding participants. This is completely optional and we leave it up to you to do what works best for your venue, but it is common for competitions to have an entry fee and we can help you pick a number.
• If a competitor who qualified at your venue wins the State Championship Finals, as our congratulations and thanks to you for helping us advance the sport of Steinholding in your state we'll gift you with a free Qualifying Venue entry into the next year's State Championship program!

This sounds great. What are the responsibilities of an official Qualifying Venue?

We need venue partners like you to make the sport accessible by hosting Qualifying Competitions! Here are the basic requirements for participating Qualifying Competition Venues:

• NOTE: You will be responsible for setting up and judging your own competition. But don't worry, it's not that hard! Especially with the resources we described above, and we're always happy to answer any questions you have along the way to make it even easier for you to be comfortable running your event. We have limited staff though, so unless we make a separate arrangement, USSA will not be able to come to your site to conduct the competition for you given the number of competition events taking place across multiple states.
• Register your venue or festival and pay the Program Entry Fee using the link below. We're offering an early-registration discounted price of $99 until August 21th, 2023 and after that, the regular season price is $119 through the end of the 2023 season.
• Host a Steinholding Qualifying competition (a separate men's and women's competition) to identify your in-house men's and women's champions in advance of your state's Championship Finals. NOTE: Competitors must be 21 and older.
• We recommend hosting your own multi-round in-house tournament to build more hype and find the strongest competitors to represent your location in the State Finals
• As we mentioned above, we provide an extensive Competition Set-up Guide as part of Venue Membership to make sure your competition goes smoothly and help you decide how to customize the best competition format for your specific venue, and we're always happy to answer any additional questions that you have
• Collect the contact info (name/email/phone) from at least your top 3 men's and top 3 women's competitors and share it with us as soon as you have it so we can confirm their attendance at the State Finals. One man and one woman will be invited to represent your location at the state finals, but we ask that you get the contact info for your top two runners up in each category as well, so in case your winner can't make it to the finals, we have back-ups.
• Use the USSA official rules at your competitions. We provide our expanded Judging Manual to all State Qualifying venues to help make sure your judges know what they're talking about when it's game time.
• Use 1L dimpled glass steins for your competition. This is key to maintain an even playing field for competitors at all Qualifying Venues. You can purchase our official logo steins with a 20% discount, use your own if you already have some, borrow some from a friend, buy them from somewhere else- it's all good and we want to be as flexible as possible.
• We recommend offering a prize for your in-house champions. A t-shirt or other swag with your logo that your winners can wear when representing you at the State Championship Finals is a great choice, and competition winners traditionally get to keep their stein for practicing, but your in-house prize is up to you.
• Promote your local Steinholding competition and the State Championship event at your venue, on social media, etc. If you want, you can use the customizable flyer templates and social media post templates that we provide. Tag us and throw a #steinholding in there and we can help spread the word and help attract even more people to your event.

Are you thinking about registering but still on the fence? Not sure that you can meet all of the requirements? No worries, you can shoot us an email at jbanko@ussteinholding.com with any questions. Just remember that we are limiting the number of venue registration slots in each state, so register or contact us ASAP if you're interested.

Our 2023 State Championship Tournament Line-Up

Check out our current list of states with a State Championship Tournament confirmed for 2023 below and we'll be adding more states soon. If you're not in one of these states but still want to host a competition, click here for more info about your options.

• California - State Championship Venue will be Natomas Oktoberfest in Sacramento, CA, on Saturday September 30th, 2023! Recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• Massachusetts - State Championship Venue will be Jack's Abby Craft Lagers in Framingham, MA, on Sunday October 1st, 2023! Recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• Pennsylvania - State Championship Venue will be SteelStacks Oktoberfest in Bethlehem, PA, on Saturday October 14th, 2023! Recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• Ohio - State Championship Venue will be The Liberty Home Association in Cincinnati, OH, on Saturday October 14th, 2023! Recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• Tennessee - State Championship Venue will be Schulz Bräu in Knoxville, TN, on Saturday October 14th, 2023; recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• New York - State Championship Venue will be Hofbräuhaus Buffalo in Buffalo, NY, on Saturday October 14th, 2023; recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• Connecticut - State Championship Venue will be Two Roads Brewing Company in Stratford, CT, on Sunday October 15th, 2023; recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• New Jersey - State Championship Venue will be King's Road Brewing Co. in Medford, NJ, on Saturday October 21st, 2023; recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• Texas - State Championship Venue will be Altstadt Brewery in Fredericksburg, TX, on Saturday October 21st, 2023; recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• Vermont - State Championship Venue will be von Trapp Brewing Co. in Stowe, VT, on Saturday October 28th, 2023; recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!
• North Carolina - State Championship Venue will be Gilde Brewery in Charlotte, NC, on Saturday October 28th, 2023; recruiting for Qualifying Venue registrations is now open!

In A Different State?

Want to bring a championship event to your state? If you know of a bar, brewery, festival, club, or other awesome venue that wants to host a competition, we would love to partner with you to set up an event in your state. We're targeting a minimum of 15 qualifying venues to host a State Championship program. You can help us to get to this minimum by asking around in your brewers' guild or restaurant group or contacting your friends with venues. We can build from there. Contact the USSA Commissioner's office at jbanko@ussteinholding.com and let us know if you're interested!

Want to host an independent USSA sanctioned competition at your venue? You don't need to be part of a state championship series to host awesome Steinholding events for your patrons. You can still enjoy the benefits of working with the U.S. Steinholding Association by becoming a Member Venue. Check out the benefits of membership here.