From begrudging cost to steady ROI - spot the profit in live sport other pubs miss
“𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘦𝘳 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘪𝘹 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘯𝘰-𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘳. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘣𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘹𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 will get new customers into my pub.”
At FANZO (formerly MatchPint) we’ve heard variations of that quote from frustrated landlords, bar managers and on-trade marketers for over a decade now.
And as the cost of showing live sport increases, so do questions about improving the return on investment (ROI) on this sunk cost.
So we analysed the search data on 8,569 live sports fixtures this year and condensed the learnings into a simple framework that anyone can use to pick out more popular fixtures with fans, more often.
If you’re a landlord looking to drive better ROI on your live sports subscriptions, this article is for you.
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If you follow FANZO on LinkedIn you’ll know two things about us:
- We’re a marketing tool that helps pubs and bars make more money from live sport.
- We post monthly reports on what events sports fans are looking to watch in pubs like yours.
And every month, there’s always a fixture in the data that totally exceeds our expectations of what would be popular with sports fans.
Let’s call these ‘surprise hits’.
This year, fixtures like Bayer Leverkusen v Bayern Munich, Luke Littler v Luke Humphries and India v Australia have all driven significant search traffic in pubs, despite being niche concerns in the wider context of sport in the UK.
In late summer, we saw arguably the most interesting surprise hit to date, with South Africa v New Zealand in The Rugby Championship emerging as the most-searched-for fixture in UK pubs in August by some distance.
In a country where football dwarfs all other sports in every conceivable metric, that’s a notable data point.
Factor in the lack of any British or Irish involvement in the game, plus the quality of the Premier League fixtures also on show at the same, and it becomes really interesting.
Cracking The Code
There’s one key problem, however, with backwards-facing data like this - the healthy dollop of Bullseye that comes with it.
“Let’s have a look at what you could have won...”
What sports venues need is a simple way to identify the surprisingly popular fixtures, before they happen.
In light of that challenge, we’re pleased to introduce FANZO’s QHS Framework.
QHS - How To Spot A Surprise Hit
The key to this framework is identifying future fixtures that satisfy at least two of the following criteria.
- Quality
- History
- Scarcity
And any fixture that ticks off all three, should be treated as goldust.
Let’s look at what we mean by those criteria.
Quality
Irrespective of the sport, fixtures that pit the two best teams or athletes against each other have the ability to transcend typical interest levels and engage casual fans.
Using the example above, South Africa v New Zealand meeting for the first time since their epic Rugby World Cup final last year absolutely ticks that box.
The same idea applied to Bayer Leverkusen v Bayern Munich back in March - 1st v 2nd, the unbeaten upstarts vs the 10-time champs.
Alternatively, cast your mind back to El Clasicos in the 2010s when it was Pep v José, Messi v Ronaldo.
These games draw in casual viewers with a simple promise - a concrete answer to the argument at the heart of all fandom, “who’s the best?”.
History
How we’re defining history here can be broken down two ways:
- A fixture existing in the context of a long, rich narrative
- OR the promise of something happening for the first time
Both, ultimately, boil down to the enduring human appeal of storytelling.
Consider Man United and Liverpool.
They’re not just huge rivals right now, they’ve been each other’s biggest and most bitter foes for over 120 years now.
And that rich history is precisely the reason why football fans the world over stop to watch this fixture in a way that doesn’t happen for Liverpool v Aston Villa.
The fact that United haven’t seriously challenged for a league title in 12 years nor even been competitive in this fixture of late - they’ve won just 2 of the last 17 PL encounters, with an aggregate scoreline of 11 v 34 - hardly matters.
When you watch Man United v Liverpool, you’re not just watching a game, you’re watching the next chapter of something much larger. A storied narrative that existed before you were born and will continue long after you’ve died.
Now to the second idea - history being made, i.e. something happening for the very first time
For this, I’ll again draw upon the examples of Luke Littler v Luke Humphries and Bayer Leverkusen v Bayern Munich, two of the UK’s most searched-for fixtures in January and February 2024, respectively.
In the former example, the rise of a teenage prodigy and his historic romp to the final of the World Darts Championship became a story everyone could chip in on, regardless of whether you watch darts every week or still don’t know what an oche is.
In the latter, the David and Goliath narrative of perennial runners up, Leverkusen, toppling the almighty Bayern to win their first title in 120 years, clearly resonated with UK fans.
Scarcity
Whilst Quality and History are important for driving fan interest, the most important factor in determining a fixture’s search trajectory on FANZO is scarcity.
And by that, we mean how easy it is to locate a pub that you know will definitely be showing it.
Take last summer’s men’s FA Cup final, between Man United and Man City.
Despite pitting two well-matched teams, armed with enough history to fill a library, it only generated a third of the search traffic that the Champions League final (Real Madrid v Borussia Dortmund on TNT) did a few days later.
Why? No fear of scarcity for fans.
Being shown on ITV meant practically every single venue in the country could show it live.
From our analysis, Scarcity is driven in four main ways:
- Fixture clashes - where multiple big fixtures occur simultaneously, fans aren’t sure which will be prioritised in which venues.
- Niche channel - lots of pubs subscribe to the main broadcasters, but far fewer buy pay-per-view fights or specialist channels like La Liga TV.
- Overnight start times - if it’s gone half the population’s bedtime, it’s probably gone half the country’s pubs’ closing time.
- Massive mainstream interest - more pre-bookings and a larger-than-usual audience sees pubs get booked out and regular sports fans looking for alternatives (think back to July and the knockout stages of Euro 2024).
All of these forces generate uncertainty, forcing sports fans to check which venues are showing their game before they can begin to make social plans.
How Should I Use This To Improve My ROI In Sport?
Hopefully, the guidelines above will help you pick out more winners than duds as you overlay them with the unique knowledge you have of your customers and the local area.
These aren’t fixtures that will revolutionise your P&L in one night. But they can drive meaningful incremental revenue, upping the ROI on your paid subscriptions, when regularly identified.
When looking at the upcoming fixture list and working out what to show in your venue, remember the following checklist:
- Quality - Is this the best vs the best?
- History - Is something unprecedented on the line? Do people still talk about previous fixtures between these sides or athletes?
- Scarcity - Would I have trouble finding somewhere showing this if I was suddenly teleported to a brand new city?
Remember, two out of is three is the goal here.
Three out of three is goldust.
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Click here if you want to find out how your venue can make more money from live sport.
Trusted by more than 6,000 publicans and landlords in the UK, FANZO gives pubs the tools to instantly advertise their sport in multiple places from one easy source.