Putting your offers on the pub TVs: what it costs from £0 to £10 a screen, what they have to sell, and how to tell if anyone's reading them

You can put your offers on the pub TVs for nothing: most TVs will play a slideshow from a USB stick. If you want to change it from your phone and have it switch itself over at lunchtime, signage software costs about £7 to £10 a screen a month on published UK prices, and a couple of the big names do one screen free. Three screens at £7 is £252 a year, about two extra pints a week to pay for it. The software is the cheap bit. The real cost is someone keeping the slides current, and a screen showing last month's quiz night is worse than a blank one.

Plenty of pubs have three or four tellies that spend half the day on a news channel with the sound off, or showing nothing at all. That's the best advertising space in the building, sitting right above the bar where everyone's waiting to be served, and it's free. Here's what it costs to use it properly, what the screens have to sell to pay their way, and the one test that tells you whether anyone's actually reading them.

Your options, cheapest first

Published prices per screen, checked 23 October 2026

Option	Cost	The catch
USB stick into the TV, slideshow from the TV's own media player	£0	Every change means walking round with the stick. No scheduling. Not every TV loops pictures nicely, so test yours
Yodeck Free plan	£0, one screen	One screen only. You supply the player device
OptiSigns Free plan	£0	Cut-down features compared with paid plans
OptiSigns Standard	£7.95 a screen a month, or £6.92 billed annually	Needs a player device per screen
Yodeck Basic	£7 a screen a month, billed annually	Annual plan includes a Yodeck player per screen
Yodeck Premium	£10 a screen a month, billed annually	Extra integrations most pubs won't use
ScreenCloud Core	From $20 a screen a month, billed annually (US dollar price shown)	Aimed at bigger businesses

That's not the whole market, just the suppliers who publish prices you can check. There are also pub-specific screen and advertising companies who quote per pub. If you get one of those quotes, divide it by your number of screens and compare it with the table.

Hardware: every option except the USB stick needs a small player plugged into each TV's HDMI port. That's either the supplier's own box, a streaming stick, or a cheap mini PC. Yodeck's annual plans include its player, and it knocks £18 a screen off Basic if you use your own device instead. If your TVs are already smart TVs, check whether the signage company has an app for them before you buy anything.

What the screens have to sell

Here's the bit nobody selling screens shows you. I've used about £2.23 of gross profit on a £4.89 standard lager at 55% GP, from my quiet nights guide.

Software cost against extra pints, my arithmetic

Set-up	A year	Extra pints a year	A week
USB stick, any number of screens	£0	0	0
1 screen, free plan, £30 streaming stick	£30 once	14	Under 1, first year only
3 screens at £7 a month	£252	113	About 2
4 screens at £10 a month	£480	216	About 4

Two pints a week across a whole pub is a low bar. One table that sees the Sunday roast slide and books for next week covers it. Where it goes wrong isn't the software bill. It's when nobody updates the slides and the screens quietly become wallpaper. Prices above are ex VAT where the supplier shows them that way, and the £30 stick is a round number, not a quote.

What to put on them

This part is my view, not a study. What I'd do:

• One message a slide. One offer, one price, big enough to read from the far end of the bar. If it needs a sentence, it's a poster, not a slide.
• Six to eight slides, eight to ten seconds each. Someone waiting at the bar for a minute sees the whole loop. Longer than that and the thing they wanted has gone before they looked up.
• What's on next, not what's on. Everyone in the pub on quiz night knows it's quiz night. Tuesday's slide should sell Thursday. Saturday's should sell Sunday lunch.
• Change it by time of day. Coffee and breakfast in the morning, lunch deals before 2pm, the match and the evening offer after five. This is where paid software earns its money, because a USB stick can't do it on its own.
• Real photos of your own food. Taken on a phone near a window, on the plate you actually use. A stock photo of a burger you don't sell is a complaint waiting to happen.
• Date everything. "Quiz Thursday 29th", not "Quiz this week". Then a slide that's out of date is obvious to you before it's obvious to the customers.

The rules that still apply on a screen

An offer on a TV is still an offer. The mandatory licensing conditions on irresponsible promotions apply to a slide the same as a chalkboard, so "all you can drink for £20" is as unlawful on the telly as anywhere else. What's allowed and what isn't is in happy hours and drinks promotions.

If the screens play anything with sound, music videos, a playlist, an advert with a soundtrack, that's music played in public and needs TheMusicLicence. What it costs is in the music licence guide. Silent slides need nothing.

If a screen ever shows live TV, the pub needs a TV Licence. TV Licensing says one licence generally covers all the TV equipment used for the business at one site, any flat upstairs needs its own, and getting caught without one risks prosecution and a fine of up to £1,000. A screen that only ever plays your own slides isn't receiving TV. And if you're thinking of putting a match on one of those screens, read the 3pm blackout guide and what Sky costs a pub first. Showing sport from a domestic subscription in a pub is the expensive mistake.

Use your own pictures, your own words and your own logo. Other people's photos and videos belong to other people.

The test that tells you if anyone's reading it

Here's the bit I haven't seen anyone else suggest. Run one offer that only exists on the screens. Not on the chalkboard, not on Facebook, not on the menu. Something like: "Say 'telly' at the bar for a free portion of chips with any burger this week". Put a button on the till for it, even a zero-priced one, and have staff press it every time someone says the word.

After two weeks you've got a number. Ten presses in a fortnight means people are reading the screens and acting on them, and it's worth keeping the slides fresh. Zero means they're wallpaper, and no amount of software fixes that: the slides are in the wrong place, too small, too wordy, or showing something nobody wants. Change one thing and run it again. Most pubs pay for screens for years and never find out whether they sell a single thing.

Same principle as measuring a quiz night by the keg rather than the headcount, which is in does a pub quiz make money. Count the result, not the effort.

Common questions

How much does it cost to put adverts on pub TVs?

Nothing if you use a USB stick and the TV's own slideshow. Signage software you can update from a phone costs about £7 to £10 a screen a month on published UK prices, such as Yodeck Basic at £7 billed annually or OptiSigns Standard at £7.95 monthly, and some offer one screen free.

Do I need a TV licence for screens that only show my own offers?

A pub showing live TV needs a TV Licence, and one licence generally covers the business's TV equipment at one site. A screen that only plays your own slides is not receiving TV, but if any screen shows live TV you need the licence.

Do I need a music licence for digital signage in a pub?

Only if the screens play sound with music in it. Silent slides need nothing, but music videos, playlists or adverts with a soundtrack are music played in public and need TheMusicLicence.

How many slides should a pub TV loop have?

My rule of thumb is six to eight slides at eight to ten seconds each, so someone waiting at the bar sees the whole loop in about a minute. One offer and one price per slide, readable from the far end of the bar.

How do I know if my pub screen adverts work?

Run one offer that only appears on the screens, with a code word customers say at the bar, and record it on a till button. After two weeks the count tells you whether people are reading the screens.