Does your restaurant forecast know there’s a football match on? A guide to sporting events restaurant sales
You don’t need to work in hospitality to know what match day looks like. Push through the pub door just before kickoff and the bar is three deep. The room goes quiet while the ball’s in play. When the final whistle goes it all kicks off again, and the next round is ordered before the first one’s finished.
Get the staffing right and it’s one of the best days of the week. But get it wrong? You’ve either overspent on wages or staff are rushed off their feet.
Accurate forecasting is the solution.
To forecast accurately, you need to take external factors (like football games) into account.
Knowing there’s a match isn’t enough. You need to know how much busier each site will get, and when.
Our team looked at how Premier League match days can influence sales depending on where you're based, what type of hospitality business you run, and when the game takes pace.
How do sporting events impact restaurant sales?
On average, a site within 2 km of a ground makes about 15% more on match day than on a normal day for that weekday. That's roughly £430 extra per site, per match. For sites inside 1 km, it's closer to £900.
Whether your site sees more or less than that comes down to 4 things.
How close you are to the football ground
The sites closest to the stadiums on game-day get the biggest lift, while the ones across town barely notice.
Inside 1 km radius, a match adds 25 to 30% of sales to the day. Between 1 and 2 km, it’s around 8%. Further out, about 6%.
The lift is strongest right next to the ground (+29% within 0.5 km, from only 4 branches) and fades steadily to +8% within 4 km. The second baseline reads higher almost everywhere because it compares with earlier years, when branches sold less; the first baseline is the cleaner comparison.
What kind of hospitality business you run
The type of hospitality business you run has a huge impact on whether game days will boost sales.
Within 3 km of a ground, pubs and bars do best, up about 28%. Quick service and fast casual are up around 15%, and restaurants around 10%. Cafés and bakeries hardly move, at about 4%.
To sum it up: The same match can be a big day for football pub sales by the ground and a normal one for the café next door.
When the game kicks off
Kick off times can influence how much profit you make on a match day.
Saturday lunchtime games give the biggest boost. Friday, Monday and midweek evening games add a reliable lift too, because they fall on nights that are usually quiet. Saturday evening games give the smallest uplift.
Trade also starts picking up about 4 hours before kickoff, peaking at around 3 hours before (roughly 29% above normal). Once the game starts, it falls back. At full time it jumps to 27% above normal.
So with a 3pm kickoff, your busiest time is lunchtime. This spike in demand means that you need extra staff working at 12, not at 3.
The result matters, too. A home win adds roughly 7% to the day's sales for sites within 2 km compared with a defeat.
Whether a nearby football match helps you at all
A nearby football match doesn’t always mean more customers, so check how match days affect each site before scheduling more staff.
Within 2 km of a ground, 1 in 5 sites sells less than usual on match day. This reduction is likely because of closed roads, regulars who stay away, or office workers who avoid the area. Increase staffing at those sites, and you're paying for a busy day that never comes.
This is why accurate, site-level forecasting matters.
When you know how external factors, like game days, will impact footfall at each location, you can schedule staff accordingly. You control labour costs, deliver a good customer experience, and keep profits as healthy as possible.
Recommended reading: How to create a demand based schedule
Pre-match checklist: how to staff for match day
Match-day staffing works best when you plan for the demand each fixture brings. Check these five things before the next game to schedule the right people at the right times.
How Nory’s forecast analyses external events
Nory’s Forecasting Assistant already takes external factors and events into consideration when predicting sales.
The agentic AI software reviews fixtures and kick-off times, learning how much an event (like a football match) changes trade at each of your sites, hour by hour. The system knows which sites get the rush, when it comes, and which ones go quiet.
This data impacts your scheduling and inventory, so there’s extra restaurant staffing on match days when it gets busy and the stock is there when you need it.
Side note: Football is the first type of special event we’ve built into the forecast, but it won’t be the last. We know that concerts, marathons, and other big events change trade in the same way. We’re adding more of them while working with customers to prioritise the events that matter most to their sites.
If you run 2 or more sites, we can run the same analysis on your estate. We’ll show you which of your sites gain on match day, by how much, and at what time of day.
Book a chat with the team to get the ball rolling (pun intended).
FAQs about sporting events restaurant sales
How can restaurants measure whether a sporting event was profitable?
Compare the extra revenue from an event with the additional costs of running the service, including wages, stock, and any promotional discounts. Also account for food waste and changes in average spend per customer. A busy shift can still deliver poor margins if the extra sales cost too much to serve.
Should restaurants change their menu for major sporting events?
Consider offering a smaller menu for high-demand fixtures if your usual dishes take longer to prepare or need ingredients that are tricky to manage in large volumes. Focus on dishes your kitchen can produce consistently at pace, and check that each option still delivers an acceptable margin. Test the changes against your usual menu before making them a regular part of your event plan.
How should multi-site restaurant groups plan for major football tournaments?
Treat each venue as a separate operation when planning for a tournament. Some sites may attract fans watching games together, but others may see customers leave the area or change their usual dining habits.
A platform like Nory creates sales forecasts for each location, so you can spot differences between sites and plan opening hours, menus, promotions, and staffing accordingly.
How we analysed match-day sales across 300+ UK hospitality sites
We analysed Premier League fixtures to understand what a football match really does to trade and what a forecast needs to know to get it right. We took match day restaurant sales data from 300+ UK restaurants, pubs, cafés, and quick-service sites on Nory, all within 4 km of a Premier League ground, and compared each match day with a normal day at the same site.
Our team looked at the Premier League specifically: 20 grounds, most of them in big cities. The analysis covers the 2024/25 season, with the fixture list running from August to May.
Nory’s restaurant demand forecasting model is trained on data going back to 2021. We compared each match day with the same site’s average for that weekday over the previous four weeks without a nearby game.
Every site counts equally, and every figure combines several sites and customers. Some groups, such as pubs and bars, are based on fewer sites, so their figures are less precise. We haven’t adjusted for bank holidays, weather or other events on the same day. Nory isn’t affiliated with the Premier League or any club.
