Sport: international football and shopping

The Football World Cup and the European Cup are usually terrific festivals of football. This makes them major retail opportunities as well. In 2018, half the world tuned in to watch at least some games of Football's World Cup. Global advertising spending rose by $2.4bn and World Cup betting in the UK rose from £1bn (2014) to £2.7bn. The Centre for Retail Research has followed these and subsequent games, providing forecasts since the late 2000s, and given forecasts also for the Olympics.  

THE EUROPEAN CUP 2020

The European Cup competition 2020 was held in summer 2021, just as the economy and populace of the UK were restarting following successive lockdowns and the closure of many shops and stores. Football is very close to people's hearts. Success for British footballers on the pitch could do more to spur the economy forwards than a thousand political speeches. 

This certainly happened in England, even if nowhere else in the UK.  Success of the English team drove forward the food and drinks trade such that sales in June 2021 were +9.5% higher than the previous month, largely attributed by the ONS to football fever. In football England, Wales and Scotland field different national teams. In the 2020s Cup (ie in 2021) as usual the only national team to play winning football was the England one. It reached the final, but was defeated in the penalty shoot-outs (again, as usual). 

We estimate that increased spending resulting from the Euros was as much as £3,430m

• £2,615m in retailing
• £815m in hospitality (mostly pubs, cafes, and hotel bars)

This research was funded by VoucherCodes.com, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. Further details - see below.

These are additional sales figures - ie we deducted normal spending from the revised estimate, as otherwise how could any tell whether sales had risen or fallen?.

Why so accurate? The figures are calculated not by using a grand algorithm, but estimating spending on a large number of different spending categories and then adding them all up. That is why the figures seem so precise, but probably are only correct to +/- 8%. 

But is this additional spending?  Yes. If you invite people round to watch the footie, we include the actual spending on food, drink and treats but deduct what they would have spent anyway on the dinner or tea they would have had normally. Similarly additional spending in pubs to watch the Euros, is minus what would be spent in pubs anyway without the Euros. 

Surely, increased retail spending NOW means less in a few months' time? We heard this a lot. The answer is No.  This argument is an example of what we term the RETAIL-FUND FALLACY, so named after 19th century fallacies such as the wage-fund or the iron law of wages (note: the latter means your wage rise means someone else's wage reduction. So wages in total can never rise!). There is not a fixed sum that consumer spend on retail or in pubs. It is possible for retailers to increase their share of total consumer spending. In the 2010s, retailers lost market share in favour of higher spending on foreign holidays, meals out, weekends away etc. Spending more now on one category of consumer expenditure, does not necessarily mean spending less in future. Particularly as these proponents of the gloomy science were telling us all the way through 2020,H2 and 2021,H1, that ONS data showed that personal savings had increased by more than £180bn, which should have been more than enough to cover an extra pub meal, friends around for the evening and a little more drink than normal.  

Lastly, get a sense of proportion! Although increased spending of more than £2.6bn sounds a tremendous amount it is insufficient to galvanise the economy. We never said it would be, but it is still worth celebrating. Total retail sales in 2021 will be around £404bn, so proportionately that increased spend is only a 0.6% boost. Football-related spending probably helped shoppers to get out and about and supported pubs and stores in the aftermath of the Lockdown III, but it could only be part of helping the economy get on track. 

Our Estimates of Spending for World Cup 2018

We estimated that additional consumer spending on the 2018 Football World Cup in the UK was £2,451m. This was made up of extra retail spend of £1,914m and extra spending in pubs of £510m. The Euros 2020 figures of course were much higher, but then there was more to celebrate.