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UK supermarkets are confident of victory heading into Sunday’s Euro 2024 final between England and Spain, with pubs, bars and restaurants the underdogs in the competition for spending from cash-conscious customers.
The country’s largest grocery chains are predicting that shoppers will stock up on drinks and food to watch the football at home amid a challenging economic climate, while some hospitality venues have warned of patchy trade.
Eight in 10 sports fans will stay home to tune in, rather than heading to pubs or bars, according to research by UK customer loyalty rewards platform Airtime.
The UK’s largest supermarket Tesco said on Friday it had a “well-rehearsed supply plan” to cope with “the extra demand”. The chain said last month that it was winning share from restaurants as consumers were “increasingly choosing to dine in”.
Rival Sainsbury’s said it seemed shoppers were stocking up on beers in preparation for the weekend, with sales expected to increase by 200 per cent year-on-year.
Julie Ashfield, managing director of buying at Aldi UK, said it was “expecting family and friends across England to gather on Sunday evening”. Lidl said: “If we get the magic combination of sun and football, we could expect [BBQ range] sales to increase by over 35 per cent.”
Pubs are expecting an uptick. Greene King pubs managing director Clair Preston-Beer said it was expecting to serve over half a million pints during the match — a record amount for a match.
But she added: “Consumer demand has been challenging. Customers are prioritising the big events . . . and therefore other parts of the week are not as strong.”
Chris Jowsey, chief executive of Admiral Taverns, expects to generate twice the revenue this Sunday, but said: “What we’re seeing is it displaces spending from other days in the week . . . That’s primarily because people just don’t have the disposable income to do what they normally do.”
On the day of the semi-final, Admiral saw its revenues go up by nearly double than a usual Wednesday, but Thursday was down 25 per cent, Jowsey said. “I suspect the grocers would see an uplift over the weekend.”
Fuller’s chief executive Simon Emeny said one boost came from the permission to stay open until 1am, although it’s main market is before 11pm, and it expected to have “a very, very busy evening”.
Rich Robinson, head of hospitality and leisure at Barclays, which sees almost half of the UK’s bank card transactions, said that pubs and bars “will be hopeful that Wednesday’s result will set the tone for this weekend’s final and the rest of summer” especially after cold weather encouraged many Britons to stay in instead of dining out.
Growth in spending at bars, pubs and clubs was modest, at 0.5 per cent last month, Barclays said, but pub transaction volumes more than doubled on the day of the match, increasing 131.5 per cent year-on-year, and up 54.7 per cent when compared with the previous Wednesday.
In the Spanish capital and surrounding towns the match is expected to bring 640,000 people and €11.6mn in spending to its many bars, according to Hostelería Madrid, a trade group for the sector. It said Spain’s six games so far had pulled in 2.1mn viewers, who spent an average of €18 per game, partly reflecting the low price of beer compared with northern Europe.
Additional reporting by Guy Chazan in Berlin, Barney Jopson in Madrid and Daniel Thomas and Valentina Romei in London