Standing the test of time

What’s the pub’s background?

“It’s been a cricket pub for at least 30-odd years, it was independent and has been transferred through Marston’s and now onto Fuller’s. Fuller’s reinvented it between August and October last year and we had a big refurb, which took it back to its cricket roots.

“Now we’ve gone full-on with cricket bats on the wall – we had a big reopening with [ex-England captain] Mike Gatting coming down – even on the inside of the menus now we’ve got the scorecard from the Headingly Test match [in 1981] when Ian Botham got his 149 not out. Staff wear cricket tops for uniform and cricket ball red aprons.”

What makes the Pavilion End unique?

“Working in a city is probably one of the nicest places you can work – we get city folk midweek and then tourists at the weekend. The fact that it’s something different every day. We’ve got bookings, sport on, fresh food – it’s just busy all week.

“We’ve got 25 staff here and we’ve trained up the management ourselves – we’re quite big on making sure the people we have working here have developed, the deputy manager used to be a glass collector. Pretty much everyone has been promoted from within and trained up.”

How big a part of your business is sport?

“We’re busy all day when the cricket’s on, busy in the evening when the football’s on, rugby is more of a weekend sport.

“We have three Sky boxes, nine big TVs and a big pull-down HD projector screen. There’s sport on all day, every day, everything from the Indian Premier League cricket, rugby, football, tennis, golf – there’s always something going on.

“For the moment, we’ve got the Cricket World Cup and the Women’s Football World Cup – last year was massive for women’s sport and that will grow further this summer. Then we’ve got The Ashes taking us back into the next football season and the Rugby World Cup.

“When it’s a big Test match, everyone’s in all day – so with the Cricket World Cup and The Ashes coming up, we will be full and our food menu will adapt around what big games are on that week – we’ll do food from whichever nations are playing.

“Then obviously we’ve had the Champions League – full of massive games – and the Six Nations on at weekends, they’re big.”

How do your customers watch sport?

“We’ve got a private room – which fits 10 people who can come in, have their own screen and put whatever sport they want on – then we’ve got another room that fits up to 100 people, which has a couple of screens and its own bar, then upstairs we’ve got different bookable tables with their owns screens and a beer garden out back.

“You can have about 400 people here with people drinking out the front where you can have a drink in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral.

What are your biggest sellers?

“­There are more people eating in the evenings. Everyone used to come in for lunch around the city but now everyone who comes out and has a drink also watches the sport and wants to eat.

“Best-sellers are gammon, egg and chips and the club sandwich. We have a standard menu of burgers, pies and sandwiches then, every week, the chef comes up with five specials. People like that around here because most of the other pubs have a menu that’s stuck for three months, but here we have a menu that changes every week.

“With the amount of regular people you have in the city, it’s good to keep it turning over.”

How do sports fans differ from one another?

“With cricket, it’s a nice steady day – people are in and out all day, you don’t have a general rush. Rugby fans all come in one pack, generally at the weekend so they’re not our regular footfall.

“With football, we get so many different nations in because of where we are in London, but we have a big influx of Italian football fans. We get busy for different teams and nations, which can surprise you – you’ll open up thinking it’ll be a quiet night and then you’ll find you’ve got 50 Swedish people come in to watch the game, that sort of thing.

“Over the past 10 years, because there are increasingly more and different cultures in London, you get busy around different things.”

Fixture fever

Just over a month since the last Premier League season wrapped on 12 May, the fixture generator machine whirred back into action to reveal the 380 games to be played out over the course of the 2019-20 campaign on 13 June.

An unprecedented 200 Premier League games taking place between 9 August and 27 May will be televised next season – 42 more than the 2018-19 season – with next season also poised to be the first in the league’s history to feature a mid-season break with 10 fixtures split between 8 and 15 February.

According to research by MatchPint and CGA, pubs that broadcast football will see an average increase of £30,000 in incremental sales.

With this in mind, here’s a snapshot of what we know about the 2019-20 season so far:

Opening weekend’s televised fixtures

Friday 9 August

Liverpool v Norwich – 8pm – Sky Sports

Saturday 10 August

West Ham v Manchester City – 12.30pm – BT Sport

Spurs v Aston Villa – 5.30pm – Sky Sports

Sunday 11 August

Newcastle v Arsenal – 2pm – Sky Sports

Manchester United v Chelsea – 4.30pm - Sky Sports

Who owns what?

• Amazon: 20 games – 10 fixtures from Boxing Day and 10 from one bank holiday
• BT Sport: 52 games – 32 fixtures at 12.30pm on Saturdays and 20 midweek fixtures
• Sky Sports: 128 games – 32 fixtures at 5.30pm on Saturday, eight fixtures at 7.45pm on Saturday, 24 fixtures at 2pm on Sunday, 32 fixtures at 4.30pm on Sunday