The England Effect; 320% Boom in Pub Engagement for Final World Cup Rounds

Yext, Inc. (NYSE: YEXT) released new research into the economy of sport in England, showing pub engagement surging 320% on July 5th, following England’s penalty shootout success.

Measuring the online behaviours of UK-based pub goers throughout the FIFA World Cup 2018, the findings challenge popular notions of the archetypal England fan, proving consumers co-ordinated where they wanted to watch the next match at least 24 hours in advance.

For instance on July 10th, a day ahead of the semi-final against Croatia, pubs experienced a 97% increase in engagement. A startling contrast to the actual match day, July 11th, where pubs experienced 24% less engagement.

The study, conducted among 155 individual pubs powered by Yext across the UK, analysed the total number of actions (such as ‘Get Directions’ clicks, ‘Click to Call’ interactions, and clicks to pub websites from search) each pub received and user engagement, calculated by looking at the total number of actions divided by the number of times each location was seen online.

Opening round

Despite predictions this would be a tournament watched from home, engagement during the first week of the World Cup rose on average by 31% compared to the pre-World Cup period. Compared to non-match days, the pub set experienced 465 more actions or ‘clicks’ per day through the Group Stages.

As the competition went on, pubs would have become increasingly aware of more traffic directed their way online. In particular, Germany and Brazil matches drove consumer excitement with the final matches played by each team generating up to approximately 6,000 actions across the pub set.

Last orders

Once England was knocked out of the World Cup, pubs across the country experienced consistently less engagement day by day. This came to a head on July 15th, the day of the final, where engagement dropped by 28% to its pre-World Cup level.

“England fans drove a major boom in online engagement and in-person business to pubs during the World Cup; and then, as quickly as they came, World Cup pub-goers were gone after the final and traffic was back to its normal levels,” said Jon Buss, MD UK and Northern Europe at Yext. “England fans performed in-depth online research on where to go to watch matches throughout the tournament, checking key business information — such as opening hours, location and menu items. For businesses to capture opportunities like this, they need to make sure this digital knowledge is up-to-date and correct.”

Boom in reviews

Football fans are also a vocal market. Over the course of the competition, customers left 1,550 more reviews per day across the entire pub set when compared with pre-tournament levels. This is equivalent to 49,600 more reviews than an equivalent period before the World Cup.

As England’s World Cup approached its climax in the semi-finals, there was a boom in consumers sharing their opinions of their experiences at pubs, generating 6,820 more reviews on July 10th with an average review rating of 3.9, lower than the average 4.1 rating given before the World Cup.

Buss concluded, “Reviews are an integral part of the decision-making journey we embark on as consumers. Not only are they vital in fuelling the revenue stream, they can be very useful insight tools, informing the business about which elements of the experience work and which need attention. Having one view, and being able to manage the authenticity of reviews, are the keys publicans need.”



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