The World Cup Index
The World Cup Index, a collaboration with Twilio, is a public map of which UK pubs were showing the World Cup. An AI research agent phoned pubs across the UK and asked, completing 4,439 conversations over a weekend. 2,313 pubs were verified as showing matches, and it captured 498 Guinness prices in the same calls.
The agent says it is an AI at the top of every call, asks its questions, and sells nothing. It carried two variables rather than one: whether the pub was showing the matches, and what a pint of Guinness cost. Asking more than one thing per respondent is ordinary survey design. Doing it across 4,439 completed conversations in a weekend is what the AI makes possible. The second variable returned 498 verified prices, which fed into the Guinndex.
Of the 2,313 pubs verified as showing, 1,343 said every match and 970 said selected fixtures. We published that split rather than the single number. Another 1,302 said they were staying football-free, which turned out to be useful to people who wanted a quiet pint.
The fieldwork ran over a weekend. Twilio Programmable Voice carried the calls, ElevenLabs' conversational AI platform ran the agent, and the pipeline was built with Claude Code. The agent says it is an AI before it asks anything, and answers honestly if asked again. Fans and bar staff can add or confirm their own local at guinndex.co.uk/worldcup, so the index keeps updating through the final.
"Matt didn't build another chatbot, he built something genuinely useful. Instead of thousands of football fans individually calling pubs to ask the same question, an AI agent did the legwork once and created a resource everyone can use. That's the exciting part about programmable communications: developers can build AI that doesn't just talk, it gets things done in the real world."
Jake Kanter, Vice President of Sales, EMEA, Twilio
Frequently asked
What was the study?
Ahead of the tournament's final week there was no reliable list of which pubs were showing the match. Working with Twilio, we put an AI research agent on the phone to pubs across the UK and asked.
How many pubs were verified?
2,313 verified as showing matches (1,343 every match, 970 selected fixtures) and 1,302 staying football-free, from 4,439 completed conversations over a weekend.
How does asking two questions in one call work?
The agent carried two variables: whether the pub was showing the matches, and what a pint of Guinness cost. That is ordinary survey design. The second question returned 498 verified prices that fed straight into the Guinndex.
What was Twilio's role?
Twilio Programmable Voice carried the calls. ElevenLabs' conversational AI platform ran the agent, and the pipeline was built with Claude Code.
Does the agent say it is an AI?
Yes, before it asks anything, and it answers honestly if asked again. It sells nothing and takes no lead. This is consumer research, not marketing.
Is the map still updating?
Yes. Fans and bar staff can add or confirm their own local at guinndex.co.uk/worldcup, so the count keeps climbing above the 2,313 from the phone campaign.