Tesco is Official Home to England World Cup Team

Tesco is to be the official supermarket for the England World Cup team, stocking everything from flags to pizzas, trading cards and snacks. The grocer replaces Sainsbury's as the official England supermarket and goes head-to-head with ASDA which has a deal to sell official Fifa merchandise via its parent Walmart.

Tesco will host a World Cup Web portal and will also promote items such as television sets.

"We will be past the election and the other side of the recession and people will be in a mood to party," says David Potts, Tesco's retail director. "We are a different business since the last World Cup, we sell a lot more general merchandise than we did and we will take advantage of people wanting to buy things like new TVs. We also have twice as many express stores."

The British Retail Consortium estimates that the 2006 World Cup generated £1.25 billion ($1.91 billion) in retail sales and anticipates similar for 2010.