$17 billion spent by consumers on Super Bowl weekend

The Super Bowl is the biggest day in American sports, with roughly two-thirds (68%) of all Americans saying they’ll watch the game. This equates to roughly 174 million American adults. Apparently, adults with deep pockets, given the roughly $17 billion spent on Super Bowl weekend.

Where are we watching the game?

Where you watch the Super Bowl is almost as important at the game itself, which is why of the 68% who plan on watching, Super Bowl parties are the game plan. They’re so popular that roughly 23% of Americans say they’ll attend a Super Bowl party, with a further 22% saying they’ll host a party.

Other popular viewing options include at home (15%) or at a bar (6%). Still, plenty of us won’t be Monday-morning quarterbacking: Nearly two-thirds of Americans — 31.68%, representing 80.7 million people — say they won’t watch the game.

Who is watching the game — and where?

Super Bowl parties are popular across the board, with roughly 26% of men and 21% of women planning to attend a party. As far as hosting goes, men (26%) are more likely than women (19%) to host a Super Bowl party. Women (38%) are almost twice as likely as men (22%) to say they’re not watching the game.

Older generations less likely to socialize for Super Bowl

Whether you’ll attend a Super Bowl party might depend on your age, with younger generations like Gen Z (29%) and Gen Y (29%) far more likely than Gen X (20%), baby boomers (19%) and the Silent Generation (18%) to go to a Super Bowl party.

We can’t say the same for those planning to watch the game at home, with older generations like baby boomers (23%), the Silent Generation (21%) and Gen X (17%) more likely to stay home for the event than Gen Y (8%) or Gen Z (5%).

Hey, big spender!

With 174 million Americans planning to watch the Super Bowl, you can be sure big money is spent. In 2020, that figure is an expected $17.72 billion.

As you’d imagine, food and drink are the most common items people buy on Super Bowl Sunday, accounting for roughly $13.56 billion (78.7%) of all the cash that’s splashed on the day. Other areas of spending include furniture and TVs at $1.28 billion, team gear at $1.27 billion and game day decorations at $1.1 billion.

Pay the cost to be the host

How much you spend on preparing for the Super Bowl depends on one thing: Are you hosting a game day party? Hosts expect to spend about twice as much as those merely attending a Super Bowl party.

The largest discrepancy between hosts and attendees comes down to food, with those hosting a Super Bowl party saying they’ll spend an average $85.16 versus just $37.47 of party attendees.

Hut! Hut!: Men plan to spend more on Super Bowl Sunday

Men are expected to outspend women on Super Bowl Sunday in all but one area. While men will spend more on furniture, team gear, food and decorations, women will outspend men on drinks.

With age, comes wisdom — and the ability to spend it up for Super Bowl

While baby boomers are less likely than younger generations to watch the game, they plan to spend big on the Big Game. Especially on new furniture, with the average boomer expected to drop $153.

• Methodology

  Methodology

  Our data is based on an online survey of 2,398 US adults commissioned by Finder and conducted by Pureprofile in January 2020. Participants were paid volunteers born between 1928 to 2002.

  We assume the 2,398 participants in our survey represent the US population of 254.7 million Americans who are at least 18 years old according to the July 2019 US Census Bureau estimate. This assumption is made at a 95% confidence level with a 2% margin of error.

  Our survey asked people where they plan to watch the 2020 Super Bowl and how much they estimate they will spend for the Super Bowl in the categories of food, drinks, furniture, team gear and decorations. Possible selections for Super Bowl viewing locations were:

  • Party you attend
  • Party you host
  • Bar
  • I will not watch the Super Bowl
  • Other

  If responses to “Other” included the words home or house, we assumed the respondent planned to watch the Super Bowl at home. This assumption may have resulted in incorrectly categorizing people who plan to watch the Super Bowl at another person’s home or house as instead watching at their own home.

  Average spending calculations are based solely on participants who said they planned to watch the Super Bowl and spend in a selected category — for example, to calculate mean spending on food, we did not include the 31.68% of participants who selected “I will not watch the Super Bowl” and the 67.65% who selected “$0.” We calculated total Super Bowl spending based on estimated spending in the categories of food, drinks, furniture, team gear and decorations.

  To avoid skewing the data, we did not include extreme outliers in our mean calculations. Extreme outliers are defined as data values that lie more than three times outside the interquartile range and below the first quartile or above the third quartile.

  We define generations by birth year according to the Pew Research Center’s generational guidelines:

  • Gen Z — 1997–2002
  • Gen Y (or millennials) — 1981–1996
  • Gen X — 1965–1980
  • Baby Boomers — 1946–1964
  • The Silent Generation — 1928–1945

For media inquiries:

Allan Givens
Public Relations Manager
203-818-2928
allan.givens@finder.com

Nicole Gallina
Communications Coordinator
347-677-4931
nicole.gallina@finder.com

Image: Getty