Those endless days of an English summer are nearly upon us. The smell of freshly-cut grass drifts across the village green. Cricket is returning to hundreds of villages across the country. Saturday afternoons spent lazing in the sun watching the lads run back and forth. Longer, warmer evenings mean pints down the local with friends. A thousand little beer-and-music festivals spring up every weekend: steam trains, cider, bad rock music and burnt sausages. Pub gardens start to fill up. England feels alive.
Nowhere is the gamble sharper than with cask ale
And the World Cup is almost upon us. England are among the favourites to win the tournament, which starts tonight. A warm summer lies ahead, huge crowds ready to gather and watch the Three Lions progress. Things look rosy, or so you might think, for pub landlords like me.
But here is the rub. The government has allowed us to stay open until 2am for the big night games. On paper, this is a benefit for Britain’s battered pub industry. The problem is the same old numbers trap.
We are still not making money. We lost 161 pubs in the first three months of 2026, nearly two a day, for all the usual reasons: VAT, National Insurance hikes, pension contributions, energy bills and, above all, staffing costs. Finding good workers is difficult, if not impossible. Tell them they will be working until three or four in the morning for the late kick-offs, and you will not see them back the next day. You gain one night and lose the next day’s trade.
