Gambling is fast becoming a jackpot for British pub giant JD Wetherspoon
Revenues from fruit and slot machines are up 60% over the last six years.
Tim Martin’s ever-expanding chain of JD Wetherspoon pubs is mostly famed for cheap pints, dizzying carpets, faraway bathrooms, and good value (only sometimes microwaved) meals. However, if the 45-year-old company’s financials are anything to go by, we might soon be adding “gambling” to that list of Spoons’ most iconic attributes.
Slotted Spoons
Shares were trading at a two-year low on Friday after investors didn’t get the profits they expected from the pub giant’s half-year report — operating profit slumped 4% — but there was one burgeoning part of the business that caught our eye: Wetherspoon’s growing slot/fruit machines division, which brought in a record £35.5 million in the first half of FY25.
Nudging up
Anyone who’s been in an old-fashioned British pub (think: characterful boozer, rather than modern gastro) will likely be familiar with the sight of a fruit or slot machine flashing away in the corner, as punters feed notes and coins into the game. However, they’ve only really become a considerable part of the Wetherspoon’s picture in recent years, with slot/fruit machine revenues climbing more than 60% in the last six years and 12.4% in the last year, outstripping the 5.4% and 4.3% growth notched by food and drink sales, respectively.
Though they’re still not a patch on the amount of money its “bar” segment brings in just yet — Brits spent a whopping £589 million on Wetherspoon’s drinks in the first six months of the fiscal year, splashing out on everything from Woo Woo pitchers to pints of Worthington’s — fruit and slot machines have become the pub’s biggest earner behind food and beverages.
With Spoons’ notoriously low-cost pub grub and pints, especially compared to ever-growing national prices, it’s fair to assume that fruities and slots offer better margins for the chain, too, helping keep profits at its ~800 branches frothy.
