Cizzle Brands Announces CWENCH Hydration™ is Now the Official Sport Drink of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 2, 2025--

Cizzle Brands Corporation (Cboe Canada: CZZL) (OTCQB: CZZLF) (Frankfurt: 8YF) ( the “Company” or “Cizzle Brands”), is pleased to announce that CWENCH Hydration is now the official sport drink of the National Hockey League’s Ottawa Senators. As part of the three-year agreement (the “Agreement” ), CWENCH Hydration™ will also become the exclusive sports/isotonic drink sold in bottles, cans or Tetra Pak packaging at the Canadian Tire Centre (home arena for the Ottawa Senators) during pre-season, regular season, and playoff games for the Ottawa Senators and the Ottawa Black Bears (lacrosse) as well as at each of the Bell Sensplex and Richcraft Sensplex facilities.

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In addition, Cizzle Brands will launch a limited time offering (“ LTO ”) flavour of CWENCH Hydration™ named Powerplay Punch in collaboration with the Senators featuring the team’s logo and related insignia. The Company has received commitments to sell Powerplay Punch from retailers in the Canada’s National Capital Region, including Sobeys, Healthy Planet, and Circle K (Ontario).

The Agreement also provides Cizzle Brands with robust advertising rights for CWENCH Hydration, including:

The agreement with the Senators is Cizzle Brands’ latest strategic sponsorship for driving visibility and awareness for CWENCH Hydration™ in the hockey world. It builds on the sponsorship agreement with Canlan Sports Ice Corp. for the naming rights for CWENCH Centre - a Canlan Sports Community, as well as Cizzle’s agreement with USA Hockey, the governing body for the sport of ice hockey in the United States, to become USA Hockey’s Official Hydration Partner. Several notable hockey players and personalities have also collaborated with CWENCH Hydration™ including Montreal Canadiens’ winger Cole Caufield, NHL MVP and Colorado Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon, and hockey influencer Coach Chippy.

Cizzle Brands’ Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer John Celenza commented, “The start of hockey season in Canada is a special time of year for hockey players, hockey fans of all ages, and for us at Cizzle Brands. So, it’s great to be announcing this deal with the Senators, our first official agreement with an NHL team. The CWENCH Hydration™ brand has reached a key level of maturity, with a particularly strong presence in Canada’s National Capital Region, which will only grow with the launch of Powerplay Punch. It is a pleasure to team up with the Ottawa Senators, for many exciting hockey seasons ahead.”

About Cizzle Brands Corporation

Cizzle Brands Corporation is a sports nutrition company that is elevating the game in health and wellness. Through extensive collaboration and testing with leading athletes and trainers across several elite sports, Cizzle Brands has launched two leading product lines in the sports nutrition category: (i) CWENCH Hydration™, a better-for-you sports drink that is now carried in over 4,400 locations in Canada, the United States, and Europe; and (ii) Spoken Nutrition, a premium brand of athlete-grade nutraceuticals that carry the prestigious NSF Certified for Sport® qualification. All Cizzle Brands products are designed to help people achieve their best in both competitive sports and in living a healthy, vibrant, active lifestyle.

For more information about Cizzle Brands, please visit: https://www.cizzlebrands.com/

For more information about CWENCH Hydration™, please visit: https://www.cwenchhydration.com

About the Ottawa Senators

One of seven NHL franchises based in Canada, the Ottawa Senators returned to the league in 1992 following a 58-year absence. Ottawa won 11 Stanley Cups during its original reign from 1903 to 1934. The modern-day Senators have captured four titles in the Northeast Division and a Presidents' Trophy in 2002-03. Since 1992, the Senators together with its foundation, alumni, partners and fans have now contributed more than $100 million to community initiatives in the National Capital Region.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Company,

CIZZLE BRANDS CORPORATION

“John Celenza”

John Celenza, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

This news release contains "forward-looking information" which may include, but is not limited to, information with respect to the activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, such as, but not limited to: new products of the Company and potential sales and distribution opportunities. Such forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words and phrases such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to the Company.

Forward looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other risk factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such risks include risks related to increased competition and current global financial conditions, access and supply risks, reliance on key personnel, operational risks, regulatory risks, financing, capitalization and liquidity risks. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company undertakes no obligation, except as otherwise required by law, to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors change.

CWENCH Hydration™ is now the Official Sports Drink of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators. Along with the recognition, CWENCH will be launching a LTO flavour, Powerplay Punch, which will be sold in Canada’s National Capital Region.

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — An Iranian Kurdish separatist group in Iraq said it has launched attacks on Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days in retaliation for Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests.

Members of the National Army of Kurdistan, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, have “played a role in the protests through both financial support and armed operations to defend protesters when needed,” Jwansher Rafati, a PAK representative, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Iranian media has previously accused the group and other Kurdish factions of attacking security forces.

Iranian activists say more than 2,797 people were killed in the government’s crackdown on a recent wave of nationwide protests.

A handful of Iranian Kurdish dissident or separatist groups — some with armed wings — have long found a safe haven in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, where their presence has been a point of friction between the central government in Baghdad and Tehran.

Iran has occasionally launched strikes on the groups’ sites in Iraq but has not done so since the outbreak of the recent protests.

The PAK is the first of the groups to claim armed operations since the protests and crackdown began.

“When we found out that the IRGC was shooting protesters directly, our fighters in Ilam, Kermanshah, and Firuzkuh responded with armed operations and inflicted significant damage on the regime’s forces,” Rafati said in an interview in Irbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

The PAK has also claimed a number of attacks online and posted video of what it said were operations against IRGC targets, sometimes accompanied by grainy videos showing gunshots or explosions and buildings ablaze. The AP was not able to confirm the extent of the damages or the impact of the attacks.

Rafati said the attacks were launched by members of the group’s National Army of Kurdistan military wing based inside Iran. The group had not sent any forces from Iraq, but it anticipates that Iran may strike PAK bases in Iraq in retaliation for its operations, he added.

He said the PAK has been providing support to dozens of Iranians who fled to the Kurdish area in Iraq since the crackdown on protests began.

The PAK claims may put Iraqi authorities in a sensitive situation with Tehran — which wields significant influence over its neighbor — concerning the group's ongoing presence in northern Iraq.

Iraq in 2023 reached an agreement with Iran to disarm Kurdish Iranian dissident groups and move them from their bases near the border areas into camps designated by Baghdad. The bases were shut down and movement within Iraq was restricted, but the groups have remained active.

During the Israel-Iran war last year, the PAK and other Kurdish dissident groups began organizing politically in case the authorities in Tehran should lose their hold on power but did not launch armed operations.

A PAK spokesperson told the AP at the time that premature armed mobilization could endanger the Kurdish groups and the fragile security of Kurdish areas, both in Iraq and across the border in Iran.

A decade ago, PAK forces received training from the U.S. military when they were taking part in the fight against the Islamic State militant group after it swept across Iraq and Syria, seizing large swathes of territory.

Ironically, the PAK at the time found itself allied with Iran-backed Shiite Iraqi militias that were also fighting against IS.

At that time, the PAK received funding from Iraq's Kurdish regional government, but says now that most of its funding comes from its supporters in Iran and the diaspora.

During the recent protests, Iranian state media has repeatedly referred to the demonstrators as “terrorists” and alleged they received support from America and Israel, without offering evidence to support the claim.

Iranian state television aired what appeared to be surveillance video of a group of men wearing the baggy pants common among the Kurds, firing pistols, in Iran’s western Kurdish region. It has also published images of seized weapons in the area.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, which is close to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said Kurdish groups including the PAK “have played an active role in inciting these movements by issuing coordinated statements and messages.” It said that “groups based in northern Iraq have passed the stage of psychological warfare and media operations and have entered the field phase.”

The semiofficial Fars news agency, which is also close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported on Jan. 10 that another group — the Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK — had killed eight Guard members in Kermanshah and that a PJAK sniper killed a police officer in Ilam province. PJAK has not claimed any armed operations during the protests.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report. Sewell reported from Beirut.

This image made from video shows the representative of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, Jwansher Rafati, speaking during an interview with The Associated Press, in Irbil, Iraq, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Farid Abdulwahed)