Grocery sales to surge as football fans stock up on booze

British, or mainly English, shoppers are predicted to make an extra £1.4m trips to the shops to stock up on alcohol and other groceries before England’s World Cup quarter final with Sweden.

Tills are likely to ring up £860m of boozy grocery sales on 6 and 7 July – 5% more than would normally be expected, Kantar Worldpanel said.

Alcohol will be the big winner with sales 25% higher, bringing in an extra £26m of sales. More than 30% of extra shopping trips will include alchohol, Kantar said. Wimbledon is also likely to fuel alcohol sales, including Pimm's, Kantar added.

Matt Botham, the research company’s strategic insight director, said: “Retailers need to make sure they’re prepared for the extra footfall on a stock and staffing level – long queues and empty shelves just before kick-off are unlikely to go down well with shoppers.”

Shirt sales are also likely to surge because consumers tend to wait until England is doing well in a tournament before shelling out for a pricy replica. Sales of shirts were £8m when England went out in the last 16 of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa but only reached £2.5m in 2014 when the team did not make it past the group stage in Brazil.

Kantar said shirt sales could hit a new record if England win the quarter final on 7 July.