Six Nations: Rugby provides a sporting chance

There's an opportunity for pubs to convert early in the 2008 sporting calendar, a chance to scrum down and provide a solid base for the year ahead. Much doom and gloom has been talked about our football teams' failure to qualify for the summer's European Championships, and the knock-on effect that will have on the number of pints supped by sports fans in UK pubs. But perhaps consolation can be found in the rising popularity of rugby.

As licensees in the home nations prepare for the Six Nations Championship that takes place in February and March, they can look to last year's Rugby World Cup for encouragement. The England team defied a poor start to reach the final. And the fans packed the pubs.

The British Beer & Pub Association estimated an extra 17 to 20 million pints of beer were sold on the weekend of England's clash with South Africa in the final, with a total of 40 to 45 million in total. Before that weekend, brewers were predicting spikes in beer sales, including Guinness, which forecasted a 250 per cent increase that weekend.

The number of people watching the game was upwards of 10 million. There is without doubt significant interest right now in rugby, and pubs should be exploiting it. Can the sport help to fill the gulf left by the situation with the football?

Greene King certainly believes so. It has placed significant stock in rugby in recent years, with IPA becoming the official beer of England Rugby and Greene King branding its pubs official supporters' venues. Its Belhaven sites replicate this for Scotland.

David Elliott, managing director of Greene King Pub Partners, the company's tenanted pubs arm, says: "With football, most pubs will show it. On balance, 30 to 40 per cent of pubs show the Six Nations, but that compares with around 10 per cent showing the games five years ago.

"We are all looking to see how we can fill the void left by football. Because rugby is so high up our agenda, Greene King can't do any more to push it than we were planning on doing had the football teams been playing this summer. But we need to replace the business somehow, and rugby is something we can use to compete."

It could provide inspiration and help you to turn this sporting event at least into a win.