Two of the summer's biggest sporting moments. Two very different baskets.
We put both to the test with 200 British sports fans, split evenly by gender and across two age groups (18 to 34 and 35 to 54), to see what people actually buy - or plan to buy - because of the football World Cup, and because of Wimbledon.
The headline is easy to guess. Football fills more baskets. The interesting part is everything underneath it: the two occasions fill the trolley with completely different things, the extra spend looks less like a bigger weekly shop and more like an extra trip, and that last point splits sharply by age.
Here's what the data told us.
This is the finding worth stopping on. Football and Wimbledon don't compete for the same trolley. They fill different ones. And knowing which is which matters more than knowing who wins.
The football basket skews savoury and indulgent. Crisps and snacks led at 54%, ahead of beer or lager at 48%, takeaways at 45% and pizza at 40%. Worth noting: snacks, not beer, is the single biggest football buy.
The Wimbledon basket skews sweet and fresh. Strawberries topped it at 31%, with ice cream or lollies a close second at 30%, ahead of soft drinks at 27%. And here's the sharp contrast - sweet treats are an afterthought for football, where desserts scraped just 12%. For Wimbledon, they're the main event.
One split was significant: ice cream and lollies for Wimbledon indexed higher with women (38%) than men (23%).
The same occasion carries a completely different flavour profile depending on the event. So the real question isn't "how do we get on the football bandwagon," it's "which of our lines has a natural claim to which moment." And the answer can be counter-intuitive: a dessert brand's instinct may be to chase the huge football crowd, but the data lands it on tennis, with a female skew that sharpens who that moment speaks to. The smaller crowd may be where you're the obvious choice, rather than being the tenth thing in a beer-and-crisps trolley.
The volume gap is not close. We asked which event had more influence on their spending, 58% of shoppers said "the football, clearly," against just 6% for Wimbledon.
But 57% said neither event has actually changed what they buy at all. Plenty of people watch the sport and shop exactly as they always would.
The lesson is a familiar one: if you're the natural fit for the occasion, you're pushing on an open door. A crisp brand riding the World Cup barely has to try. Anyone without an obvious claim to the moment is trying to shift behaviour that wasn't going to change - and that's the 57% they're up against.
Here is the finding with real commercial teeth. The standout response wasn't a fatter weekly shop, it was an extra trip. 40% of shoppers made an additional top-up shop because of one of the two events.
For a large slice of shoppers, especially the over-35s, the occasion shows up as a whole new trip rather than ‘a bit more’ in the weekly shop. That's a natural fit for quick-access formats and front-of-store visibility, where the basket gets built on the spot.
For under-35s the trend reads as showing up inside the existing shop instead, so the same tactic may not travel across age groups.
Three things worth carrying into your next occasion plan.
The baskets are opposites. Savoury and indulgent for football, sweet and fresh for Wimbledon, with ice cream significantly skewed to women. The occasion changes the flavour profile entirely.
Football wins on volume, but 57% say neither event changes what they buy. If you're the natural fit, you're pushing on an open door; if you're not, you're fighting that 57%.
Incremental value reads as a top-up trip for the over-35s, yet the opposite for under-35s. The single biggest behavioural lever may not be consistent across age.
If any of this raises a live question for your brand, these are the Stickybeak tests that map to it:
🎯 Wondering which occasion your product has a natural claim to? An Idea screening test reads appeal and preference across up to 12 concepts, so you can see which occasion-linked ideas earn their place.
📊 Weighing a match-day bundle or a Wimbledon offer? A Promotional offer test measures how appealing a specific offer is to potential buyers before you commit media or space to it.
🛒 Not sure how shoppers approach the occasion in the first place? A Usage and attitudes test gives a quick snapshot of how a category is bought, perceived, and where the barriers sit.
