A World Cup is boom time for pubs and, by extension, Fanzo, as the tournament’s official venue finder pushes into the US, says founder Leo MacLehose.

When World Cup fever grips football fans across England and beyond over the coming weeks, one London-founded business will have extra reason to cheer.

Fanzo is the website and app for finding out which pubs are showing the sport you want to watch, and may be better known to drinkers of a certain vintage as MatchPint. It rebranded in 2022 as part of a global expansion and this week announced a partnership with World Cup sponsor Michelob Ultra to help football fans find the best venues in the United States.

The tie-up for a World Cup taking place mostly in the US is a key plank in the company’s push into the American market. It already boasts of being the only product of its kind to operate at national scale across multiple countries and continents, with 7.5m users worldwide.

“I think there is nothing more unifying than a football World Cup. People coming together to watch sports and enjoying that in a social environment is about as global a language as you’re going to have,” founder Leo MacLehose tells City AM.

“These tent-pole moments have always been massive for us,” he says, adding that the time difference, resulting in 10pm kick-offs for England supporters and 2am games for Scotland fans, will drive a lot of enquiries for venues with extended licences. 

“Particularly with these World Cup events, you know how packed those bars are. It’s a different equation in terms of planning, in terms of bringing fans together, so it always provides a massive peak in terms of people looking to book tables for 10 people in front of a big screen.” 

Fanzo is free to access for sport fans but charges fees to venues seeking to market themselves as the place to watch the big game. Having started in 2010 and survived a global pandemic, it now operates in nine countries including the UK, Australia, France and the US, and has revenues of more than $5m, says MacLehose.

While the fragmentation of live sports rights has become a growing gripe for punters both here and overseas, the difficulty in finding out not only which broadcaster is carrying your chosen game but also which establishments have the requisite subscriptions has only strengthened the use case for Fanzo. Gone are the days when one or two subs were enough. 

“To be honest, all of that fragmentation, all that complication is really great for us,” he says. “It means it’s more difficult for bars to understand what’s on, where it’s on, how they show it, and then once they are showing it, marketing it properly.”

Fanzo eyes Canada and Mexico after US

Fanzo’s business model is resilient to the advent of the AI era and zero-click searches, MacLehose says, because it is still its listings that are being scraped for the answers and, therefore, it continues to pay for pubs and other venues to ensure they appear on them.

“There’s a change in the ways that people search for things, but there isn’t a decrease in the number of people going ‘I want this offline social experience’,” he says. 

“We can build a better product using AI, help fans find great venues in a better way and help rights holders and brands activate the out-of-home space data, but it’s not a fundamental reinvention of the way that our industry and our value proposition works.”

Beyond the US, where Fanzo last year acquired the owner of The SportsTV Guide ahead of its North American push, it is understandably targeting Canada, Mexico and other European countries for further expansion. Before then, MacLehose has a World Cup to watch – even if he is now required to spend more time in the States away from his usual watering holes.

“My favourite places to watch these games tend to be those that have a big outdoor screen that’s a kind of big pop-up format,” he says. “When in the UK, the Five Points brewery is a really great place in East London, and Two Tribes Brewery, who are putting up outdoor screens just like that. Hopefully, the weather keeps the same level and I’ll have those types of experiences.”