Grocery sales could rise by 5% ahead of England’s match this weekend
With England playing in the World Cup quarter finals this weekend, new figures have shown that the game could generate a 5% uplift in grocery sales today and tomorrow.
According to data from Kantar Worldpanel, alcohol sales are likely to climb by 25% to bring an extra £26 million to the market over the two days. Kantar also expects over 30% of the extra shopping trips made in the period to include alcohol in some form.
Matt Botham, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “We’re looking at an extra 1.4 million trips to the shops on Friday and Saturday. Retailers need to make sure they’re prepared for the extra footfall on a stock and staffing level – long queues and empty shelves just before kick-off are unlikely to go down well with shoppers.”
Kantar is also predicting record sales for England football shirts if the team performs well at the weekend but also said that sales could “drop off a cliff” if it failed to make it to next Wednesday’s semis. Sales hit a high of £8 million when England was knocked out of the South African World Cup in the last 16 in 2010 but fell to only £2.5 million in 2014, when the team failed to make it out of the group stage in Brazil.
