Firstly, well done to Arsenal for a well deserved FA Cup triumph. It has been a long old time, nine years in fact, since the Gunners won a decent bit of silverware, but now the wait is over and Arsenal fans will be hoping that this will be a springboard to further success next season. But why exactly am I bringing this up?

Good Or Bad For Business?

Since the FA Cup final, hype about England’s chances at this years World Cup in Brazil has built up markedly. Especially after an interview with Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard saying that the talent in the England squad was scary and that the team should dream about getting into the latter stages of the competition. The papers seemed to like it, I on the other hand think we don’t have a chance in getting past the first round. But the reason why I bring this sort of subject up is because in previous big sporting events, industries like ours always seem to suffer from a lack of energy.

We saw it during the olympics in 2012, the World Cup in 2010 and the Euros in 2008 and 2012. Business always seems to suffer a lull for those weeks while major competitions. Leads drop, so inevitably sales drop too. This has been my experience.

It’s not all bad though. Beer sales spike massively during football tournaments. If you’re a pub in a town centre, then expect to be busier than usual. Sports shops can expect sales in replica shirts, boots, footballs and everything else round ball related. But we don’t sell beer or footballs, so there’s very little we can do about that.

Just daring to think out loud here, but if England do progress far into the competition, could it actually have a positive effect on business, including our own industry? Well possibly yes. If you look online enough you can find various studies that say a positive national mood breeds more confidence and does actually end up in boosting business. Whether that actually translates to a rise in sales for us guys is a different matter.

Or lets look at it a different way. Should we be making more of a fuss about occasions like this and jumping on to the rising hype? Should we be using our marketing with a World Cup spin to try and capture some of that extra energy from football fans and try and make the purchasing of windows and doors a bit more fun?

But for now, lets have some predictions. Personally I don’t think we have a chance against Italy or Uruguay, with Costa Rica the only team where I think we can get some points. I could be wrong, so lets have your predictions. Leave them in the comments section below and tell me how right or wrong you think I am!