Traditionally, religion and politics are said to be the topics to steer clear of if you want to avoid the bar room debate becoming too heated. While sport is also a subject which provokes a fair amount of passion among its enthusiasts, avoiding it is not an option for most pubs.
From a friendly darts match to high profile international tournaments such as the World Cup, sport is an integral part of the pub scene, and can help to increase trade and boost profits in a variety of ways.
Big Screen TV
If you haven't got a ticket for the match, watching it at the pub can be the next best thing. For many sports enthusiasts, it is certainly far more exciting watching live sport in the company of a bar full of fellow fans than at home by yourself.
While a conventional TV with a reasonably large screen may be enough for some pubs, many customers now expect a big screen system, and will choose to go to a pub which has one.
Big screen TVs mainly work by projecting the image. Some systems, however, are more robust than others, and some are particularly suitable for pubs. The smoky atmosphere of a pub creates particular difficulties, and you either need a system which is specifically designed to cope with this, or to ensure that the recommended cleaning and maintenance regime is strictly followed. The best advice is to seek specialist advice from a company with a proven track record in installing and maintaining big screen TV systems in pubs.
Costs
All televised sports, such as rugby, cricket, golf, snooker and darts, have their followers, and all have the potential to generate trade if properly promoted.
Football, however, is far and away the biggest draw, and so the question pubs have to ask at the outset is whether the trade generated by showing live football two or three times a week justifies the cost of buying or hiring a big screen system as well as the cost of an agreement show games.
Sky TV has the rights to live Premiership football, as well as many other tournaments and events. To show Sky TV in the bar, you need a commercial agreement and will have to pay a Sky business fee based on the rateable value of your premises. A domestic agreement covering a pub's living quarters does not cover the public areas. The same is true of other cable and digital broadcasters such as OnDigital and U-Direct, both of which have the rights to certain football matches and tournaments.
Pay per view
Another thing to be aware of is the increasing number of pay-per-view events for which pubs, as well as domestic subscribers, are asked to pay an additional fee over and above their subscription. Pubs have to gauge whether customer interest will justifies the extra charge, and it also pays to check the timing of the event.
Most pay-per view boxing bouts, for example, take place in the USA and so are shown live in the UK in the early hours of the morning. While some licensing justices have been willing to grant pubs an extension in order to show a sporting event live, this is still unusual. The pay-per-view fee usually includes a repeat showing the following day during normal opening hours, but will this be a big enough draw for customers who already know the outcome? Sports promotions
Sport sponsorship is big business for many drinks brands. Carling's £36million link-up with the football premiership makes it the UK's biggest sponsor, and there are numerous other examples from Stella Artois tennis to the Martell Grand National.
In most cases, brands will run on-trade promotions to tie in with coverage of the event, ranging from discounts on stock, which allow pubs to run four-pints-for-the-price-of-three type promotions, or added value offers such as branded merchandise and scratchcards, as well as point-of-sale marketing material.
Even those brands which aren't official sponsors will often try to jump on the bandwagon by running sports-based promotions during major tournaments such as the World Cup or rugby Six Nations championship. It pays to shop around to decide which of the promotions on offer is most likely to appeal to your customers.
And if nothing quite matches what you're looking for, you can always develop your own ways of bringing in extra customers. This can be a simple as a half-price pint when the home team scores or a sports-themed quiz night. A few pubs even take things as far as the Travellers Joy in Rayleigh, Essex, which last year pressed its regulars into service to build replicas of Wembley's famous twin towers in the pub car park to commemorate the last match at the stadium.
Getting the fans involved
Targeting fans of a local team whose games are televised regularly obviously makes a lot of sense, although it also means that there are going to be other pubs in the area chasing the same market. Some pubs have capitalised on minority sports such as ice hockey, by persuading groups of enthusiasts to adopt the pub as their base for televised games.
Evergreens, a pub in Central London, has become the unofficial London home of Welsh rugby. As well as international matches, the pub regularly shows club games televised by the BBC and Channel 4, which are available through its satellite and cable subscriptions. The many Welsh rugby enthusiasts living in London were initially targeted through a message from the pub on a rugby website, and are kept up-to-date in the same way.
Pub teams
There may be local sports teams in your area looking for a place to call home. Any club without its own facilities needs somewhere to hold meetings or simply get together for a pint after the game. Equally you may be able to persuade your regulars to form a team - whether its football, darts, poll or even a pub quiz team - and enter a local league. Operating a team and arranging fixtures takes a certain amount of organising, which you may be able to delegate to one of the team members, but it also guarantees regular trade and helps to establish your pub within the community.
Promoting the event
Successfully marketing and advertising your pub events is the subject of a feature in itself, scheduled for a forthcoming issue of Your Business, but the basic rule is, if you don't tell anyone what's going on, they can't be there. Use posters in the pub to publicise forthcoming events, whether its a televised match of a home game for the darts team - and where appropriate advertise more widely, using noticeboards and the local press.
Security
As we said at the outset, no matter how good natured the fans are to start with, feelings can sometimes run high during a football match or other sporting fixture. If you are showing a match where the outcome is likely to be important, or where fans of both teams involved are likely to be present, plan your staff rotas accordingly and think about having extra security if necessary. A good door supervisor may well discourage any trouble before it starts, as well as making sure the pub doesn't get too full. That way everyone is guaranteed to have a good time, whatever the result