The England Effect: 320% boom in pub engagement for final World Cup rounds

Exploring the economy of sport, new research by Yext disproves any notion Brits stayed at home, with 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, 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, it seems 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.