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Super Bowl viewers are ready to splash their dollars and shout over a football game this year.
Americans are planning on spending around $17.3 billion on the Super Bowl for things like food, beverages, apparel, and decorations, according to estimates from the National Retail Federation — up by nearly $1 billion from last year. And about 80% of that will be on food and drinks, per NRF.
In total, American households are expected to spend a total of around $86 on average for their Super Bowl necessities. They’re also shaking up what their game day menus will look like: Don’t expect a simple spread of meat fresh off the grill at your parties come Sunday. The National Restaurant Association said that Super Bowl food habits are shifting a little this year.
“Looking, of course, at what America's must-haves are for a Super Bowl party, burgers, and barbecue are down this year,” Sean Kennedy, executive vice president of public affairs at the National Restaurant Association, said in a US Chamber of Commerce press call. “The top three items: wings, pizza, and then salsa dips and spreads.”
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Then there's the Taylor Swift of it all.
A new demographic is tuning in for what could be a record-breaking number of viewers. 21% of Americans surveyed by the Seton Hall Sports Poll said that yes, the presence of Taylor Swift had something to do with them or someone in their household deciding to watch the game. It makes sense that spending is up and that it's following more gendered lines.
For example, Kennedy said that women, by a sprawling margin, view chips and salsa as Super Bowl must-haves and feel similarly about nachos.
While some may order their nachos from restaurants, others will make them at home. As grocery inflation has cooled much faster than inflation at restaurants, it’s only recently that it’s started to become a better deal to make food at home than order out.
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However, many Americans may still be opting to outsource their Super Bowl meals — a boon for the restaurant industry. The National Restaurant Association estimates that 59% of the nearly 70% of Americans watching from home will be ordering takeout or delivery — up from 31% of Americans ordering takeout and delivery 12 years ago.
The increase of $1 billion over last year’s Super Bowl represents about a 6% increase in spending, more than double the inflation rate for food in the most recent Consumer Price Index, which was under 3% in December.
This big jump in spending suggests that there is at least some added buzz for this year’s Super Bowl, something supported by other evidence.
While Super Bowl ticket prices have fallen a bit heading up to the Super Bowl, they opened on the day after the AFC and NFC Championship games at some of the highest levels in history. The average ticket price of about $11,000 13 days before the game second only to the 2021 matchup when the game was limited to 25,000 due to Covid restrictions during the pandemic.
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At least some of that increased interest in the Super Bowl is almost certainly due to Swift, who is expected to be at the game.
CEO David Steinberg of Zeta Global, an AI-powered marketing cloud, told CNBC this week that the NFL's ratings jumped 7% after Swift attended her first game in September. They are predicting a record TV audience for this year's Super Bowl because of her impact.
Chiefs owner Clark Hunt discussed the growth of the team's fanbase due to Swift during an interview on CNBC, saying the team’s female audience grew “leaps and bounds” during the second half of the season.
The increase is also significant considering this is a rematch between the same teams that participated in Super Bowl LIV in 2020, when the Chiefs beat the 49ers. A Super Bowl’s buzz factor can be hurt by teams returning so soon from their most recent appearances — this is the Chiefs’ fourth Super Bowl appearance in the last five years — and this one is compounded by including teams that already played each other in the big game recently.
