Winning in major events: how suppliers can turn uncertainty into growth.
16 September 2026 | Cameron MartinMajor events, like the 2026 World Cup, can create significant demand, but the opportunity is not equal across every sector, audience or occasion. Suppliers need to focus their investment where their products can add genuine value and be ready to adapt to different levels of interest and engagement.
What do the 2026 World Cup, Christmas and Oasis Live ’25 have in common?
They all give away from home operators and their suppliers an opportunity to capture excitement, boost footfall and increase sales. Yet, the opportunity is not equal across every sector, audience or occasion. Suppliers need to focus investment where their products can add genuine value and be ready to adapt to different levels of interest and engagement.
Our 2026 World Cup research highlights this challenge. While pubs and bars experienced the strongest growth in spend and transactions, other hospitality sectors struggled to benefit from interest surrounding the tournament.
Demand was shaped by a mix of predictable and unpredictable factors, such as
fixture timing, weather, team progression and the way consumers chose to celebrate, meaning suppliers cannot treat tournaments as one large, predictable opportunity.
Instead, they should use a Decide, Prepare, Monitor and Adapt approach to select which events to prioritise, plan for uncertainty and respond while engagement is high.
Decide where your brand can win
The first step is to decide where your product, category and brand have a natural role and which of your operator customers have a credible route to growth.
Younger consumers were most likely to celebrate the World Cup outside the home, while 81% of followers planned to watch some of the matches at home. This created natural opportunities for alcohol adjacent occasions, challenging food led businesses to compete for value led and convenience missions in the home.
Suppliers should assess each event against its audience, occasion, route to demand, potential value, deliverability and ability to influence consumers. They can then identify the products, activations and customers most likely to convert interest into spending.
This may mean supporting shared, drink-led viewing in pubs, creating food and drink packages for pre-game restaurant offers or prioritising delivery-led businesses to target at home viewing occasions. Rather than investing everywhere, the aim should be to own a relevant role where the opportunity is strongest.
Prepare for different outcomes
Once the opportunity has been selected, suppliers need to prepare for more than one eventuality with multiple demand scenarios.
During the World Cup, actual engagement exceeded pre-tournament intentions by 11 percentage points, supported by England’s progression and the jeopardy of knockout football. At the same time, exceptional heat meant that 70% of consumers changed their food and drink choices and 69% experienced a reduced appetite.
These conditions helped Mitchell’s and Butler’s drink-led brands grow 2.6%, while its food-led brands declined 2.4% during the relevant quarter, demonstrating why a single forecast and activation plan are insufficient.
Suppliers should prepare responses for weak, expected and exceptional demand. The core product range and priority customers may remain fixed, but stock, activations and promotional mechanics can flex to different scenarios.
Although predicting the exact outcome of events is impossible, scenario planning can help to decide which commitments should be made early and which can remain flexible until stronger performance indicators emerge.
Monitor signals that matter
Even when suppliers select the right event and operator customers, demand can shift throughout the event and even during individual fixtures.
During England’s victory over Croatia, absolute spending peaked at 8pm, one hour before kick-off, while the strongest year-on-year uplift occurred after the match. Demand was also concentrated around key goals, momentum shifts and breaks in play, rather than being distributed evenly across the game.
Suppliers may have limited influence closer to the event, but they can still monitor signals that guide investment, activation and execution, including advance bookings, rate of sale, weather, team progression and account performance.
Monitoring should aways be linked to a decision. A rise in bookings might justify releasing more stock or extending account coverage. Extreme heat may require a different product range, contingency plans and alternative supply options to reduce disruption. Weak demand may indicate that investment should be scaled back or redirected to another, more promising event.
Adapt before the opportunity passes
Performance signals create the most value when businesses can act on them quicky.
Stonegate recorded 664,000 bookings and poured 12.5 million drinks during the tournament, trading 60% above forecast. Exceptional demand of this scale highlights the both the opportunity of major events and the risk of not responding to emerging demand signals. Suppliers can only capture additional value if they can respond quickly enough with additional stock, wider coverage or increased activation.
By monitoring the signals that matter and pairing them with earlier scenario planning, suppliers can decide whether to scale investment, protect execution, reduce activation, pivot or withdraw.
Build an event capability not a single campaign
The 2026 World Cup demonstrated that, while major events can create significant opportunities for away from home operators and their suppliers, demand is uneven and shaped by a range of predictable and unpredictable factors.
No two events are exactly the same. Whether its major cultural events, like Christmas, Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day, sporting events, entertainment, including concerts and festivals, and even small scale celebrations, the lasting lesson is clear.
Suppliers need a repeatable event planning approach that helps them to turn event interest into food and drink sales growth, improved availability and stronger operator relationships.
Suppliers that are unfocused or commit too early risk supporting the wrong products, sectors, occasions and operator customers. Those that decide where they can compete credibly, prepare for multiple scenarios monitor meaningful demand signals and adapt quickly can invest more selectively and successfully.