Admiral Taverns continues strong performance in UK-Wide Leased and Tenanted Survey

Admiral Taverns, the UK’s leading community pub group with c. 1,350 pubs across England, Scotland and Wales, has once again ranked top national Pub Owning Company in the Tenant Licensee Index (TLI) in 2025, the leading sentiment tracker for the UK leased and tenanted pub sector.  

Admiral Taverns has set the benchmark, achieving an overall rating of 7.5, which was above the average of 7.1, demonstrating best-in-class relationships, a thriving culture and strong support for licensees.  

The survey, conducted by research consultancy KAM insight, featured responses from over 1,000 licensees across the UK from all pub companies. Questions were asked across a broad range of criteria including overall business support, Business Development Manager (BDM) relationships, marketing and digital support, operational systems, community involvement and how likely publicans would be to recommend their pub company to others.  

The 2025 Index was conducted against a backdrop of challenging headwinds across the sector, which was reflected in the overall optimism rating. Despite this challenging landscape, Admiral Taverns continues to perform strongly across key areas including trustworthiness, care for licensee wellbeing, overall culture and BDM quality. In a challenging environment, this represents its licensee-centric model performing at its best. The model always champions communication, support and transparency with licensees and its strong performance across these criteria indicates a high trust level amongst its licensees.  

In recent years, Admiral Taverns has grown its footprint in the sector, with acquisitions from Fullers, Marstons, and most recently 21 pubs from RedCat pub company in November 2025. The business is focusing on expanding its nationwide footprint and cementing its position as the number one UK community pub group alongside its operator managed division. It is also prioritising long-term sustainable investment to give licensees the best possible chance to run outstanding community pubs in their local areas.  

Highlights from the survey include:  

• Outstanding BDM relationships: Overall quality of BDM scored 8.0, with frequency of communication (8.0), understanding of the business (7.7), understanding of local competition (7.4) and understanding the customer base (8.0) all ahead of the TLI national PubCo. average.  

• Culture: The overall culture rating for Admiral Taverns scored 7.4 was the highest amongst all surveyed companies with trustworthiness (7.6), innovation (6.9) and care for licensee wellbeing (7.1) all above the TLI national PubCo. average.  

• Business support: Admiral Taverns scored strongly across all areas of business support, which highlights a commitment to hands on support for licensees. Recruitment support (6.9), licensing support (7.6), procurement and support for utilities (7.3) and market and consumer insight support (7.1) all scored above the TLI national PubCo. average.  

• Product support: Overall rating for the range of drinks supplied scored 7.8, ranking at the top of the surveyed companies and above the TLI national PubCo. average.  

• Community support: Admiral scored consistently highly across areas of community support, including giving charity donations and fundraising (7.6), sponsorship of local teams and clubs (7.3), hosting of groups and clubs in the pub (7.3) and events that engage the community (7.6).  

Chris Jowsey, CEO of Admiral Taverns, said: “Pubs continue to serve as vital community cornerstones for towns and villages across the UK, and in a tricky trading environment they continue to show resilience time and time again.  Here at Admiral Taverns, we are passionate about supporting licensees to run their pubs to the highest standards, which serve as key social hubs to meet, socialise and connect in. 

I am extremely proud of the entire team for the consistency with which they’ve continued to deliver great results and in particular I want to pay tribute to our BDMs who are the backbone of support for our licensees. I’m delighted their efforts have been recognised and their commitment to provide licensees with exceptional support is paying off.  I would also like to extend my thanks to our incredible licensees, for their hard work, dedication and genuine passion for their communities which makes them a testament to both their establishments, and the pub industry as a whole.” 

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