The Impact of EURO 2024 on UK Hospitality: A Closer Look
Saturday is all set to be a bumper sales day for Pubs & Bars, featuring International Rugby, Wimbledon, Formula 1 and England’s EURO 2024 Quarter Final versus Switzerland. There couldn’t be a much better sporting line-up to encourage people to visit Pubs & Bars, benefitting from the atmosphere and camaraderie that makes pubs such an unbeatable place when it comes to watching live sport.
Hospitality Data Insights (HDI) are tracking the performance of EURO 2024 using our card spending data which tracks the spending of 10.2 million people, day-by-day, venue-by-venue across 160,000 individual UK hospitality venues. Our latest data covers sales up to Tuesday 25 June, the day of England’s final group match against Slovenia. It’s been fascinating to see how the hospitality sector has performed during EURO 2024 compared to the weeks leading up to the tournament, with our analysis of the opening two weeks showing that Pubs & Bars are getting stronger and stronger as the tournament progresses.
In the opening week, Delivery was the biggest winner, with its year-on-year sales growth outperforming its performance over the previous 12 weeks by 5.0% points. Delivery has consistently been one of the best performing sectors of the UK hospitality market, so to step up its performance was an impressive feat. However, as we’ve progressed deeper into the tournament, Pubs & Bars have well and truly come into their own, with sales in like-for-like outlets returning to year-on-year growth and the uplifts getting bigger and bigger on England matchdays…. from approximately +20% in our opening game, to over +40% for our final group game.
Pubs & Bars have seen a circa 4% improvement in their year-on-year performance during EURO 2024 compared to performance over the previous 12 weeks, with the numbers looking even stronger than this when Branded Pub Restaurants are excluded. Digging into the numbers, the importance of the home nations game is clear to see, with Pubs & Bar sector typically seeing 10-15% year-on-year growth on home nations matchdays, but 3-5% declines on “other” matchdays. Ultimately, it’s the home nations matches and those that really mean something which are the key trading days, so it’s critically important that England now kick-on and take full advantage of the opportunity they have from being on the favourable side of the draw.
Winning market share is a perennial challenge for businesses, and in the context of the UK hospitality sector, EURO 2024 has clearly provided a much needed boost to Pubs & Bars with their share up to 30.2% during EURO 2024 versus 29.4% in the previous 12 weeks. However, it’s worth remembering that hospitality businesses are not just competing with other hospitality businesses when it comes to capturing share of consumers’ discretionary incomes. This point was brought home this week with a supermarket advert hitting the headlines for leading with, “It’s hard to see the screen in the pub. Stay in with two pizzas and four beers, now £5…” It’s long been the case that pubs need to deliver ‘Value for Experience,’ and it’s days like Saturday when pubs absolutely come into their own and deliver an experience which can never be replicated at home.
Let’s hope England replicate the performance trend of Pubs & Bars so far, raising their game on Saturday and rounding off a bumper “Super Saturday.” One thing’s for certain, you can’t beat the atmosphere and experience of being in a pub on days like this – the highs and lows, the banter, the excitement when a goal is scored and the shared experiences. Let’s get down to the pub and cheer England on. Pizza deals will still be available throughout the year, but occasions like this don’t come around very often!
Mark Bentley is the business development director of Hospitality Data Insights (HDI), provider of card spending insight and pricing data to the UK hospitality sector. He is a former category management controller at Molson Coors Beverage Company and a qualified beer sommelier.