One thing’s for sure if you’re a rugby fan. A day out watching the rugby at Twickenham is bound to be an exhilarating, adrenaline filled day. But is it ok to quench your thirst and wet your lips, with the occasional alcoholic beverage throughout your day in the stadium?
Although you won’t be able to take any alcohol with you into Twickenham. Once inside the stadium, there are numerous bars from which you can purchase alcohol to drink. The maximum number of drinks you can order from a bar at one time is four. Drinks are served in plastic bottles or plastic cups.
In this post I’m going to cover all the bases about having a drink at Twickenham while watching the rugby. So if that’s something you want to know about, keep reading.
If you haven’t yet bought your tickets, then I’d encourage you to have a read of this post I wrote on the best seats at Twickenham, which should serve you as a useful guide when choosing where to sit.
Drinking Alcohol In Twickenham Stadium.
So, we’ve established that you can’t take any alcohol into the stadium with you. Likely because:-
- It’d be a health and safety nightmare. You’d have thousands of people turning up with glass bottles, many of which would end up smashed.
- The establishment wants you to buy the drinks that they’re selling inside the stadium.
If you’re interested to know more about what you’re allowed to take with you into the stadium, then check out this article I wrote on what you can and can’t take into Twickenham.
Good news though, is that there are plenty of bars and food halls scattered around the stadium that are accessible for all ticket holders. And when I say plenty I do mean plenty.
I had a dig around and unearthed the detailed stadium maps for each level inside the stadium. From these I managed to identify all the bars in the Lower, Middle & Upper Tiers, of the North, East, South & West Stands.
This information is easier to display in tables which you can take a look at below.
| Twickenham Stadium | Lower Tier | Middle Tier | Upper Tier |
| Number of Bars | 21 | 25 | 23 |
Looking at the table above you can see that there are a total of at least (that’s as many as I found on the detailed stadium maps) 69 bars in the stadium that are accessible to all ticket holders.
And now I’ve broken this down into how many bars there are serving drinks in each of the different stands in the stadium. You can check this out below.
| North Stand | Lower Tier | Middle Tier | Upper Tier |
| Number of Bars | 7 | 8 | 6 |
| East Stand | Lower Tier | Middle Tier | Upper Tier |
| Number of Bars | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| South Stand | Lower Tier | Middle Tier | Upper Tier |
| Number of Bars | 4 | 6 | 5 |
| West Stand | Lower Tier | Middle Tier | Upper Tier |
| Number of Bars | 6 | 7 | 7 |
As soon as the gates open on match day, all of these bars are open. And given that the gates, bars and food stations open 3 hours and 45 minutes before kick off. There’s plenty of time to have a few drinks and a mooch around the stadium, soaking up the atmosphere before the match gets underway.
If you’re one for enjoying the pre match build up, then check out this article on how early you should get to a rugby game where I cover this topic in much more detail.
Hospitality Suites Serving Alcohol.
There are also numerous hospitality suites, which can only be accessed by hospitality ticket holders. Inside these suites are restaurants and bars. Often all the food and drink is included in the ticket price. And the bar can be accessed before, during and after the match.
Bear in mind though, that access to the particular hospitality suite depends on the hospitality tickets you’ve got. In other words just because you have hospitality tickets, doesn’t mean that you have access to all the hospitality suites.
Apart from the obvious reason; that there are different price bands or brackets of hospitality ticket sold. And that these different price bands give exclusive access to a particular hospitality suite.
The other reason that hospitality suites are only accessible with the right hospitality ticket; is that the stadium seats reserved for said ticket holder, are usually very near to the suite into which they have exclusive access.
Take a look at this article I wrote on hospitality in stadiums, if you want to read a bit more about this topic.
What Alcohol Is Served At Twickenham.
The answer to this does depend on which bars you can access. If you have access to a hospitality suite, then the bars there will have a far greater selection of alcohol to choose from than the food and drink halls dotted around the stadium for standard ticket holders.
If you’ve a regular ticket and will be visiting any of the many bars dotted around the stadium, there’s a good choice of your fairly standard, everyday alcoholic drinks available for purchase.
One thing you’ll need to accept is that prices are pretty steep inside the stadium. So prepare yourself to be spending around £6 – £7 for a pint.
What Beer Do They Serve At Twickenham?
There is a good selection of beers available at the bars inside the stadium. You’ll hand over a £1 deposit for the privilege of your plastic pint / half pint drinking vessel (refundable on return of said cup).
I did a bit of research on untappd.com and found various posts from spectators enjoying this selection of beer and cider on match day from the bars in Twickenham during 2022. You can check these out below.
- Guinness
- Stowford Press Cider
- Dropkick IPA
- East Coast IPA
- Gunner IPA
- Ice Breaker Pale Ale
- Wolfpack Pilsner
- Naked Ladies Ale
- London Pride Bitter
- Formation Lager
- London Glory Bitter
- Hophouse 13 Lager
The specific beer & cider types on sale may change over the years / seasons, so I’d suggest taking a look at untappd.com if you’re the sort of person who likes to know what tipple you might be drinking on the day.
How Many Pints Are Sold At Twickenham On Match Day?
On match days at Twickenham, there are around 161,000 pints of beer or cider bought by a percentage of the 82,000 spectators (given that many of these will be children, or people who’d prefer not to drink). That makes for busy bars before kick off and during the match.
If you take an average sale price per pint of around £6 (I think that’s fairly generous considering a pint of Guinness cost £7 in June 2022), then that’s a whopping £1,120,700 of revenue generated on match day through just pints of beer and cider alone.