Hospitality trade ready to shift for World Cup

A pub manager from Telford said he is 'interested to see' how trade will change as the hospitality industry gears up for the FIFA World Cup.

Spencer Jordan-Pitt, from the Elephant and Castle pub in Dawley, said he is expecting "around a 20% increase" in revenue this summer.

From June 11, the tournament will be hosted in the United States, Mexico and Canada, but games will kick off between 1700 GMT and 0500 GMT.

In February, the UK government announced pubs would be allowed to open later for the semi-final and final, however this got extended in April.

The last football world cup tournament to be played with similar times was the 2015 Women's World Cup, held in Canada.

Normally, Elephant and Castle doesn't show sport games at the pub, so this tournament will be it's first since the pub opened 18 months ago.

Jordan-Pitt said the venue will play most of the games, and then see what the appetite is.

"We're going to obviously show the games at all sorts of times, so it's going to be a learning curve," he said.

If England top Group L, and then beat their opponent in the Round of 32, the team's next round game would kick off on July 1, at 0100 GMT.

Jordan-Pitt said he will need to adapt to play games at "very strange" times.

"We're used to the games being during the day or early evening, but a kick off at 1am? Yeah, it's going to be a different experience I think," he said.

He added the staff were looking forward to a change in their shift pattern.

"We are prepared to be open all sorts of hours, which is going to be a shock for some of us. but yeah, it's gonna be different," Jordan-Pitt said.

People going to the pub to watch the tournament's games, like Mark Friel, they can expect a very different tournament from different years.

Friel said, in previous years, he would watch a lot of the games because they were on at "normal times."

However, this year, he expects he may need to instead catch up using the highlights.

"I am going to be at work. I start at half eight in the morning so luckily enough [England's] first three games are 9pm and 10pm, so I can come in for a couple," Friel said.

"If we qualify, it will depend what time the other games are as to whether I'll come to the pub or whether I'll just stay at home.

"If it's 5am in the morning and then I'll get to bed nice and early and and get up early and watch the game before work."

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