How to promote match days in a pub: selling the game all week, the offers that are legal, and the till test that tells you if the football pays

The pubs that do well on match days sell the game to the people already in the building, all week, then give them a reason to arrive early and stay after the final whistle. Fixtures on your own TVs and the chalkboard, free posters if you take Sky, a food order cut-off before kick-off, and the next fixture on screen at full time. Two legal points most licensees have wrong: in England and Wales the old specific ban on "free drink if we score" was taken out of the mandatory licensing conditions in October 2014, while in Scotland offering alcohol as a prize is still banned outright. And whatever you do, count it: compare your match days with the same slot on days with no game, because that's the only way to know if the subscription pays.

I'm writing this for the ordinary league weekend, not the World Cup final. The big tournament games look after themselves. It's the wet Tuesday Champions League night and the Sunday 4.30 that need the work.

What a game is actually worth

The best published numbers are for England tournament games. CGA's figures, published by UKHospitality during Euro 2024, showed England fixtures lifted hospitality sales by an average of 21% year on year across Great Britain, peaking at 33% for the Slovenia game, with drinks sales up at least 40% on each England matchday. That's the top of the market. I haven't found a published figure I'd trust for a normal Premier League Saturday in a community pub, and I'm not going to invent one. Your own till is the only honest source, and I'll show you how to read it further down.

Set that against what it costs to show. Using the bills in my Sky and TNT cost guide and about £2.23 of gross profit on a £4.89 lager:

Extra pints a week to cover the subscription, my arithmetic

Subscription	Per week	Extra pints a week to break even
Sky at £754.38 a month	£174	about 78
TNT Sports at £871.92 a month	£201	about 90
Both	£375	about 168

Those are pints you wouldn't have sold anyway. That's the bar every match day has to clear.

First, what you're allowed to show

Showing Sky or TNT in a pub needs a commercial subscription, not a home one. And live football between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday is off limits in the UK under the blackout, whatever channel or feed it's on. Radio commentary is fine. All of that, with the court cases, is in the Saturday 3pm football blackout explained. The practical upshot is that your big slots are the 12.30 and 5.30 kick-offs, Sundays, and midweek European nights.

The week before: sell it to the people already in

The cheapest audience you'll ever reach is the one stood at your bar on Thursday. So:

• Put the weekend's fixtures on your own TVs. A simple slide in between whatever else is on: teams, kick-off, which screen. What that costs to run is in putting your offers on the pub TVs, from free.
• Use the free posters if you take Sky. Sky Business venues can sign up to MySkySports for free, customisable fixture posters covering several broadcasters, not just Sky, and ready-made images for Facebook. Most pubs I talk to have never logged in.
• Make your own posters plain. Teams, date, kick-off, channel. If you want the official branding, use the official materials rather than lifting crests and logos off the internet.
• Get listed where fans look. FANZO, the app that used to be MatchPint, lists pubs showing sport. Check your entry is right, because a fan who finds you there and turns up to the wrong channel won't come back.
• Tell the till. A note on the till screen or a card by the pumps so whoever's serving can answer "are you showing the game Sunday?" in one breath.

Match-day offers: what's legal and what isn't

This is where I see the most confident wrong advice, so here's what the law actually says.

England and Wales. When the mandatory licensing conditions came in in 2010, one of the banned irresponsible promotions was free or discounted alcohol while watching a sporting event where the offer depended on the outcome of the game or the likelihood of something happening. The free-pint-when-we-score idea, in other words. That whole schedule was replaced from 1 October 2014, and the specific sporting event ban isn't in the current version. Plenty of council licence annexes still print the old 2010 wording, which is why people think it's still there.

That doesn't make anything go. The current conditions still ban drinking games, unlimited drink for a fixed price where there's a significant risk to the licensing objectives, free or discounted alcohol or anything else as a prize to reward drinking over 24 hours or less where there's a significant risk, posters that glamorise drunkenness or antisocial behaviour, and pouring drink into people's mouths. A free pint for every goal in a packed room of lads who've been in since noon is exactly what "significant risk" is there to catch. Your own licence can carry extra conditions too, so read it.

Scotland. Much tighter. The Licensing (Scotland) Act bans any drinks promotion that offers alcohol as a reward or prize, unless it's in a sealed container to take away, along with free or cheaper drinks on buying another drink. Prices also have to stay put for at least 72 hours, which kills the half-time price drop. The detail is in my happy hour guide.

My take, on both sides of the border: put the offer on food and soft drinks, not alcohol for goals. A pie and a pint price on the board at a set price all game is a normal deal, not a prize. A bowl of chips to the table when the home side scores rewards the goal, not the drinking. And if you want to know whether a promotion's alright, ask your licensing team before you print anything.

Pricing for the big games is your call, as long as the prices people pay are the ones on show before they order. If you're thinking about it, read how to put drink prices up first, because regulars remember a match-day price far longer than you'd think.

On the day: the bits that cost you if you miss them

• Change kegs before kick-off. A keg running out in the 80th minute costs you the queue. An 11-gallon keg is 88 pints, so work out what's left on your busiest line from how many pints in a keg and change anything close.
• Check the gas. Same logic. A spare cylinder connected and ready, and the tip on telling how much is really left is in making your CO2 last.
• Stock to the game, not the week. If drinks can jump 40% on the very biggest days, a normal par won't hold. My par levels guide has the sum.
• A food cut-off on screen. "Food orders by 12.15 for the 12.30 kick-off." The kitchen gets the rush before the game instead of during it, and nobody misses the first goal waiting for a burger.
• Extra hands for fifteen minutes. Half-time and the final whistle are two short, brutal queues. One person working those thirty minutes is cheaper than the people who give up waiting.
• The next fixture at full time. As the game finishes, put the next match you're showing on every screen. They've just had a good afternoon. That's the moment to tell them when the next one is.

The till test: does the football actually pay?

Here's the idea I'd want every pub with a sports subscription to try, and I've never seen anyone in the trade write it down. Pull your till takings by hour for the last six match days. Then pull the same day and the same hours for six days with no game. Take the average of each. The gap is what the football is really bringing in.

Say a 5.30 Saturday game shows £1,450 from 5pm to 8pm and the same slot on non-match Saturdays averages £1,050. That's £400 extra in takings. Strip out VAT and the cost of the drink and at a 55% wet GP it's worth roughly £180 of gross profit, my arithmetic. One game like that a week covers Sky at £174, just. Paying for Sky and TNT together at £375 takes a bit more than two. Most tills will give you sales by hour, and twenty minutes with the reports tells you more than any amount of guessing.

Then check the stock, not just the takings. A busy match day is when pints get poured and never rung, rounds get lost and comps creep in. If your match days take money but the GP dips the week after, that's where to look, and comps and freebies is a good place to start.

Common questions

How do pubs promote football matches?

Promote the fixtures to the people already in the pub all week: on your own TVs, chalkboards and at the till, with free MySkySports posters if you're a Sky Business venue, and an accurate listing on apps like FANZO. On the day, a food cut-off before kick-off and the next fixture on screen at full time bring people early and bring them back.

Is a free pint when your team scores legal in a pub?

In England and Wales the specific 2010 ban on free or discounted alcohol depending on the outcome of a sporting event was removed when the mandatory conditions were replaced from 1 October 2014. The current rules still ban rewarding drinking with prizes over 24 hours or less where there's a significant risk to the licensing objectives, and your own licence may add conditions. In Scotland, offering alcohol as a reward or prize is banned.

Can a pub show the 3pm Saturday football?

No. Live football between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on Saturdays isn't broadcast in the UK under the blackout, and showing it through a foreign feed has led to court cases and damages against licensees. Radio commentary is fine.

Does showing football make a pub money?

Big tournament games do: CGA data published by UKHospitality showed England's Euro 2024 games lifted hospitality sales by 21% on average, with drinks up at least 40%. For ordinary league games, compare your till takings by hour on match days with the same slots on days with no game to see what the subscription is really bringing in.

How many extra pints does a pub need to sell to pay for Sky?

At about £2.23 gross profit a pint, a Sky bill of £754.38 a month, about £174 a week, needs around 78 extra pints a week to break even. Adding TNT Sports at £871.92 a month takes it to about 168 extra pints a week.