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Some more lovely tables today. One taken from the BBPA Statistical Handbook 2018 which arrived recently the other is somewhat older.

Let's kick off with older of the two tables, wjhich shows the state of play back in the mid-1970s, when the Big Six was a boout at its peak.

Between them the Big Six owned getting on for 40,000 on licences. Now I'm not sure if that's only pubs. I suspect not. I have a feeling, given the size of the total, that there are other non-pub on licences included.

The Big Six weren't all roughly equal. Bass Charrington was significantly bigger than anyone else. They owned more pubs and their share of beer sales was larger. They had almost double the mnarket share of the two smallest, Watney and Scottish & Newcastle. The latter owned fewer pubs than the others because much of the trade in Scotland was nominally free. Though, in practice, most pubs North of the border were tied through loans.

Significantly, the Big Six between them owned almost three times as many pubs as all the other breweries combined. It should really be the Big Seven, but CAMRA generally left them out as they didn't have a tied estate. They had a diifferent model to all the other breweries, providing bottled Guinness for other breweries' pubs.


Pub ownership 1974 - 1976
Bewery Uk Breweries % beer sales On Licences (1974) % On Licences
Bass Charrington 12 20 9,256 8.15%
Allied Breweries 7 17 7,665 6.75%
Whitbread 19 13 7,865 6.92%
Watney/Grand Met 8 12 5,946 5.23%
Scottish & Newcastle 3 11 1,678 1.48%
Courage 8 9 5,921 5.21%
Guinness 1 9 0 0
Total Big Seven 58 91 38,331 33.7%
Others 89 9 13,800 12.1%
Tied Trade 52,131 45.9%
Free Trade 61,498 54.1%
Total 147 100 113,629
Source:
“The Brewing Industry, a Guide to Historical Records” by Lesley Richmond & Alison Turton.
Notes:
No. breweries and % beer sales 1976
No. on licences 1974

The situation today looks very different, with most of the large brewing groups owning no pubs. The exception being Heineken. Though two-thirds of the tied houses belong to just three breweries: Mastons, Greene King and Heineken. The latter two have estates approaching those of the BIG Six in size.

Brewery-owned pubs in 2017
Brewery No. pubs
Adnams & Co PLC 49
Anheuser Busch Inbev UK 0
Arkell's Brewery Ltd 96
Asahi UK 4
George Bateman & Son Ltd 48
Daniel Batham & Son Ltd 11
S. A. Brain & Co Ltd 203
Brewdog 34
C & C Group PLC 0
Camerons Brewery Ltd. 58
Carlsberg UK Ltd. 0
Donnington Brewery 17
Elgood & Sons Ltd 28
Everards Brewery Ltd 172
Felinfoel Brewery Co Ltd. 73
Fuller. Smith & Turner PLC 373
Greene King PLC 3,048
Hall & Woodhouse Ltd 188
Harvey & Sons (Lewes) Ltd. 48
Heineken UK 2,836
Holden's Brewery 21
Joseph Holt Ltd. 128
Hook Noiton Brewery Co. Ltd. 36
Hydes Brewery Ltd. 53
J W Lees & Co. (Brewers) Ltd 141
Liberation Group (Butcombe) 69
Marston's PLC 1,421
McMullen & Sons Ltd. 125
Molson Coors (UK) Brewers 0
J.C. & R.H. Palmer Ltd 54
Frederlc Robinson Ltd 261
St Austell Brewery Co. Ltd 176
Shepherd Neame Ltd. 314
Samuel Smith Old Brewery 300
Timothy Taylor & Co.Ltd. 20
T & R Theakston Ltd 0
Daniel Thwaites PLC 248
Wadworth & Co Ltd. 224
Charless Wells 186
Total 11,063
Source:
BBPS Statistical Handbook 2018, pages 70 - 71.

Bass Charrington once owned almost as many pubs as the total number of brewery-owned pubs today.

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