Your commercial news round-up: four-day week, Brewdog, Meta Verified, BT Sport, Arsenal, fruit and veg

Reading time: four minutes

Four-day working weeks, football wages, and blue ticks on Instagram and Facebook are among some of the stories we’ve picked out for you in this week’s commercial news round-up. Have a read of our summaries below and take a look at our ‘Wrestle with PESTLE’ series for advice and case studies on how you can apply the PESTLE technique to your commercial news analysis.

• At least 56 out of the 61 firms who took part in the four-day working week trial have confirmed they plan to continue with the shortened work week. The trial, which ran between June and December 2022, saw productivity increase and “a decline in the number of sick days taken”. Mark Downs, the chief executive of the Royal Society of Biology (one of the companies continuing with the four-day working week), said that prior to the trial “on average, each person would take four or five sick days per year – that’s down to less than two”. The number of sick days fell by around two-thirds, while 39% of employees reported feeling less stressed, according to research conducted by the University of Cambridge and Boston College. In a similar vein, co-founder of Imagen Insights, Jay Richards, raised concerns about employees having to cram their work into fewer days. Richards said: “We do a five-day week but we work 10am to 4pm, we shorten the days so the employees have that work/life harmony but they’re not actually shortening their week […].”
   
• A partnership with Budweiser will see craft beer firm Brewdog expand its offering in the world’s second-largest economy, China, including plans to open more bars in the country over the next three years. This news comes after the brewing company announced closures to six of its pubs in September last year and revealed that it might pursue a listing on the stock market. It’s expected that as part of the deal, Brewdog’s beers will start to be produced at Budweiser China’s Putian craft brewery by the end of March 2023. Its 2021 financial results showed an annual operating loss of £5.5 million with China, the world’s biggest market for beer, currently accounting for fewer than 1% of Brewdog’s overall sales, according to BBC News.
   
• Meta Verified, a new paid verification subscription service much like Twitter Blue, is due to be launched by Meta for users on Facebook and Instagram, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Users will be able to submit their government ID to receive a blue verification badge at a cost of $11.99 each month on the web and $14.99 on iOS. Zuckerberg said the “new feature is about increasing authenticity and security”. Meta Verified will initially be introduced in Australia and New Zealand and businesses aren’t currently eligible to apply.
   
• BT Sport is due to be rebranded as TNT Sports. This move comes as part of the joint venture between BT Group and Warner Bros Discovery with the rebrand set to take place in the summer when the BT Sport app will be replaced by the Discovery+ streaming platform. The rebranded TNT Sports will continue to focus on live Premier League and Champions League football, as well as domestic and European club rugby, and boxing. There are no plans to make changes to prices as of yet but “it’s impossible to offer guarantees”, according to Marc Allera, BT’s consumer chief and chair of the joint venture. He added: “How the portfolio evolves determines the price of the product and how much we charge.”
   
• In other sporting news, Arsenal Women's Football Club has increased pay by almost 30% with the wage bill now sitting at £4.3 million. This figure is spread across 44 playing and non-playing staff but is still significantly less than the men’s team, which is more than £220 million, according to Deloitte’s Football Money League.
   
• The shortages of fresh fruit and vegetables is forcing supermarkets to put limits on products, including tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, with Tesco becoming the latest to enforce such restrictions. Aldi, Asda and Morrisons have also introduced similar limits. The government has cited the extreme weather in southern Spain and north Africa as the potential reason for the latest shortages, given that these regions supply a significant proportion of the UK’s fruit and vegetable at this time of the year. Spain experienced unusually cold spells, while Morocco experienced flooding. It’s likely that the shortages will last “a few weeks”, according to the British Retail Consortium, as the growing season in the UK gets going and alternative sources are found. Managing director of Nationwide Produce, Tom O’Malley, said that price increases could occur due to the shortages.

Check the News every Thursday for this weekly commercial news round-up.

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