

70% of pubs in the UK are controlled by just five global breweries & what this means for the Non-Alc sector
70% of pubs in the UK are controlled by just five global breweries and what this means for the Non-Alcoholic beer sector.
This June 20, 2025 Substack by Martin Avis is very informative of the "tied houses" in the UK's on premise/trade channel. Despite the UK having over 1600 independent breweries, they are only 10% of UK pub beer sales where in 2023 latest stats are:
ABInBev is 21.2% market share
Heineken 19.7%
Molson Coors 17.2%
Carlsberg 10%
Asahi 5.3%
Mahou-San Migel 4.2%
Diageo 3.9%.
As someone who has exported US craft beer to Europe since 2015, I'm very familiar with Tied Houses which is VERY COMMON in Europe where an alcohol company usually a brewery owns the bar/restaurant, owns the building, owns the alcohol permit or owns the draft equipment as ways to "tie" the account to this producer's brand line. There are very few independent on premise accts in Europe and even these are susceptible to being "bought" to buy draft lines.
In most countries there can be carve outs where a Tied pub can bring in an outside brand, but the contracts are still very restricted and carve outs happen say if the Tied Brand doesn't make a style of beer so there is an exemption for that pub to take an outside brand.
For example, the Tied Brand doesn't make a US style IPA, so the pub can now bring one in, but there can still be restrictions where that outside brand is NOT able to be more than X% of total beer sales. There can be various other caveats country to country or brand to brand.
As the top seven on premise/trade companies in the UK all make/import a non-alcoholic beer, curious to see how this affects the independent non-alcoholic beer brands in the UK with getting placements.
I know independent UK non-alcoholic brewery Lucky Saint has done a great job with getting 1000 draft placements in the UK and Athletic is starting to get draft placements too. I'm sure there are other independent non-alcoholic brands getting onto UK draft that I'm not aware of too.
This next comment is not meant to throw shade at any brewery doing this as I know it often is just the business reality of how business is done so you have to play the game whether you want to or not and if the various brands in the UK that are getting non-alcoholic draft placements how much of it is via "Pay to Play"?
My concern is that it won't be a level playing field as even in non-alcoholic, you will have bigger brands with more promo budget than others, thus getting the all important draft line will be especially more difficult for smaller/new brands that enter the market.
Curious what others think especially those more familiar with the UK non-alcoholic market and the challenges and opportunities in the UK non-alcoholic draft channel.
https://martinavis.substack.com/p/tied-up-and-shut-out