The Huge Impact of the Super Bowl at Retail

While the Super Bowl has traditionally been viewed as the biggest event of the year for advertisers on a global scale, it's a huge business for grocery retailers as well. Over 7.5 million consumers across the nation host Super Bowl parties for friends and family, generating millions of dollars for retailers.

In 2010, Nielsen released some pretty startling statistics pertaining to the impact that the Super Bowl has on retail channels. Here are a few interesting facts:

• The great majority of US households (9 of 10) watch the Super Bowl at home or at a friend's or relative's house instead of watching it at a bar or restaurant ... this is an astonding figure when you consider that 106.5MM people watched the Super Bowl in 2010 (note: per Nielsen, 12% of these consumers also used the web while watching the game)
• The Super Bowl continues to be a bigger and bigger event in Q1 where consumers drink billions of servings of beer at home. From a beer sales standpoint, the Super Bowl (49.2MM units) trails only the 4th of July (63.5MM), Memorial Day (61.0MM), Labor Day (60.2MM), Thanksgiving (52.8MM), Christmas (52.8MM), and Halloween (50.7MM). Grocery retailers alone sell approximately 17MM cases in the two weeks surrounding the Super Bowl.
• Super Bowl viewers purchase $644MM of snacks for the Super Bowl, a figure that is equivalent to 166 million pounds of food.

Grocery - Retail Sales (Per Nielsen)

Grocery - Viewing Statistics (Per Nielsen)