Football ban penalises Wetherspoon

PUBS group JD Wetherspoon scored another astonishing own goal today as it admitted that sales at its largely television-free pubs fell during the Euro 2004 soccer tournament.

While the rest of the country watched England's exit at the quarter-final stage and the eventual unlikely success of Greece with a drink in their hand, Wetherspoon indicated that sales across its 640-strong estate fell by about 4%.

The group has made a virtue of its pubs banning TV, music and video-games but has succeeded, like the England team, only in repeating its failure in the 2002 World Cup, when sales fell by 10%.

Wetherspoon also issued its second profits alert in three months. Reporting flat sales over the past 11 weeks against a 1% rise in the seven weeks preceding the tournament, like-for-like sales for the last 12 months have slowed to 3.5% from a previous 4.5%.

The group even admitted its own felony. 'In a minority of pubs, for example Lloyds [chain of bars], we already had televisions before Euro 2004 and we introduced televisions in a few dozen additional outlets,' the company said. 'In these pubs, like-for-like sales were strong during England's matches.'

Wetherspoon said it was suffering from increased competition from supermarkets and other pub groups and admitted another reverse: its attempts to move its clientele toward lower-strength drinks resulted in weakening sales of spirits and cocktails.