Super Bowl XLIII is a dream for makers of everything from potato chips
to beer to tortilla chips to music. |
You, like millions of others in America, will most likely spend the better part of Super Bowl Sunday parked in front of the television taking in not only the game, but the pre-game, halftime, post-game, as well as a little commercial watching in-between. And, like many other Americans, food, beverages, and friends will be part of the mix. The Super Bowl is more than a game, it’s an event. Lest there be any doubt that advertisers know they have the largest captive audience they will ever see at one moment, last year’s game between the Patriots and the Giants was viewed by a record 97.5 million people nationwide, the most-watched TV broadcast in 2008. To tap into this vast audience, the cost of a 30-second spot on FOX in last year’s Super Bowl was $2.7 million, or a total spending by advertisers of over $195 million. Even in a recession, NBC will charge a record $3 million per 30-second spot this year, a 12 percent increase from 2008. Some may wonder if the money spent is worth it. According to a report released by Nielsen Company this week, the answer seems to be yes. For example, Super Bowl advertisers saw a 24 percent jump in Web traffic the day after last year’s Super Bowl. The Pepsi commercial featuring Justin Timberlake gathered the most Internet buzz. In the week following Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ halftime performance last year, sales of their “Greatest Hits” album jumped 196%. Petty’s “Anthology: Through the Years” album jumped 240% that same week. Box office sales on the weekend of Super Bowl Sunday show notable decline. The NFL Super Bowl XLII DVD was the #1 selling sports DVD in 2008. Adding a little kick to the mix, the Super Bowl is the 8th-largest beer-selling event each year. Markets with hometown teams involved in the big game are more likely buy more beer. And, maybe the beer induced haze that surrounds the Super Bowl isn’t by chance. For the eighth year in a row Anheuser-Busch was the leading advertiser. The beer category included advertising for Bud Light and Budweiser. As the brand did in 2006, Bud Light aired three minutes of ads (six 30-second spots). Budweiser ran one 60-second commercial. And, it’s not just the day of the game that beer gets consumed in high volume. Consumers purchased nearly 52 million cases of beer during the two-week period surrounding the 2008 Super Bowl. The 4th of July tops the list of beer consuming day of the year at a staggering (literally) 68,318,493 cases sold. All that beer means that there’s an abundance of snacks to go around, as well. More snack food is sold on Super Bowl Sunday than any day of the year. The second highest snack selling day? The Saturday before the big game. Snack sales in U.S. food, drug, and mass merchandiser stores (including Walmart) are expected to reach $595 million during the two weeks surrounding Super Bowl Sunday. While Potato Chips enjoyed the largest dollar and volume sales during the Super Bowl period, Tortilla Chips generated the largest incremental gains with $20.7 million and 8.3 million pounds above average sales figures. But what’s a chip without a good dip? Dip Mixes (+38% vs. two-week average) and Canned Dips (+24.5%) saw the biggest percent surge in sales compared to other snacks for the Super Bowl. And it’s not just junk foods that saw their sales jump for last year’s big game. Rice Cakes enjoyed an 11.3% bump in sales in the days surrounding the Super Bowl last year, while Health Bars & Sticks (i.e. PowerBars, LUNAbar, etc.) saw a 3.1% increase. All told, $594,500,813 were spent on snack food last year with nearly $150 million spent on potato chips, alone ($146,988,512). So, who are we? Who is it that will watch the Arizona Cardinals take on the Pittsburgh Steelers? According to Scarborough Sports Marketing, 138 million adults – or more than 60% of the adult population in the U.S. – are NFL fans. Almost 80 million men and more than 58 million women count themselves as NFL fans, according to Scarborough Sports Marketing. The league draws fans across generations and races. While people across all socioeconomic backgrounds are NFL fans, the league is slightly more likely to attract those in higher education and income brackets. As for the markets that have the most vested interest in Sunday’s game, here’s some tidbits, according to Nielsen’s report, courtesy of Scarborough Sports Marketing:: - INCOME: Cardinals attendees2 in Phoenix have more disposable income than Pittsburgh’s Steelers attendees. 23% of adults in Phoenix who went to a Cardinals game during the past year have an annual household income of $100k+, versus 13% of Pittsburgh’s Steelers game attendees who are in that income bracket.
- CHILDREN: Cardinals attendees are more likely to have children at home – 56% have at least one kid age 17 or younger in the household, versus 39% of Pittsburgh’s Steelers game attendees.
- AGE: Both Cardinals and Steelers game attendees are more likely than others in their respective cities to be young. Steelers attendees are 31% more likely than other Pittsburgh adults to be ages 18-34, and Cardinals attendees are 23% more likely than other Phoenix adults to be in this age range.
- MARITAL STATUS: Cardinals and Steelers game attendees are equally likely to be single. One-third of game attendees in each of their home city markets are single, and these attendees are more likely than others in their home cities to be single.
- EMPLOYMENT: Pittsburgh is known as a blue collar town, and Steelers game attendees are 12% more likely than the city as a whole to be blue collar. By contrast, Phoenix’s Cardinals attendees are 18% less likely than all Phoenix adults to be blue collar.
- GENDER: Phoenix’s Cardinals game attendees have almost an even gender split. 52% of those who attended a game during the past year are male, and 48% are female. In Pittsburgh, 58% of Steelers game attendees are male, vs. 42% who are female.
Source: Nielsen Media Research, the Nielson Co.
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