Ah, The Open a celebration of golf, grit, and now… Guinness priced like it’s poured from a golden tap.
Spectators flocking to Royal Portrush this week might have come for birdies and bunkers, but they’re also getting a crash course in inflation £7.75 at a time. Yes, that’s the cost of a single pint of Guinness at the tournament. Northern Ireland’s national drink, served up with the kind of price tag you’d expect at a swanky London rooftop bar, not a windswept fairway on the Antrim coast.
Forget Augusta’s cheap-and-cheerful five beers for $30 deal that’s practically a charity raffle compared to this. Here, four pints of Guinness will set you back £31. That’s more than a round of pitch and putt, and you don’t even get a dodgy scorecard.
And it’s not just Guinness being sold like liquid gold. Cider and Singha beer are also pulling the same £7.75 stunt a 25p hike from last year. That’s right, they’ve given inflation its own tee time.
It’s a bit rich considering fans already paid up to £130 just to step onto the grounds. And while the players are swinging for a slice of the $17 million prize fund (winner pockets a tidy $3.1 million), the rest of us are left swinging our wallets open just to stay hydrated.
Compare that to Wimbledon, where a pint of Stella will still skin you for £8.85, or Royal Ascot where the beer is served with a top hat and a side of regret. Clearly, when it comes to British sport, it’s not the trophies that are priceless — it’s the lagers.
Meanwhile, back in Belfast, you can still get a proper pint for around a fiver. So why does Guinness cost more at a golf course than at the airport? Probably because they know we’ll moan, pay, and post it on Instagram with a caption like “worth it?” (Spoiler: it’s not.)
But hey, you can’t really put a price on memories, right? Unless of course, those memories involve a warm £7.75 Guinness served in a flimsy plastic cup in which case, yes you can. And it’s about three quid too much.
Still, if you’re lucky, maybe one of the players will chuck their winning cheque your way you’ll need it to buy the second round.
Cheers to that.
