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Homebodies Dominate Super Bowl Viewing, Spend the Same or Less This Year

Most U.S. households will be watching the Super Bowl at home this year, according to new research from The Nielsen Company.

Eighty-six percent of U.S. households plan to spend the same or less on food and beverages for the Super Bowl this year as they did last year. Only 5% expect to spend more. The remaining 9% don’t know, writes Marketing Charts.

Beer Marks Big Opportunity

The Super Bowl is the seventh-largest beer-drinking occasion in the U.S. During the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, 49.2 million cases of beer are sold. In contrast, during the two weeks leading up to the number one beer-drinking occasion July Fourth, 63.5 million cases of beer are sold.

However, out of those 49.2 million cases of beer, 17 million, or 34.5%, are sold at grocery stores, where consumers are already shopping for snacks and soda pick up some beer, as well.

Considering the heavy volume of beer sales, it is not surprising that during the last five years, the biggest Super Bowl advertiser is Anheuser-Busch, which spent more than $100 million on its Bud and Bud Light brands alone. Motion pictures form the biggest category of ad spending.

Potato Chips Score

Nearly 166 million pounds of snacks were sold for a total of $644.7 million in the two weeks leading up to last year’s Super Bowl. This was a 3.3% drop from what was sold in 2008.

Potato chips, the leading snack, accounted for $173.8 million of sales and 44.3 million pounds. This means potato chips represented 26.9% of total snack dollars spent and 26.6% of total consumed.

Private Label Gains Ground

During the two weeks surrounding the Super Bowl in 2007, private label snacks held a dollar share of 6.8%. During the two weeks surrounding the Super Bowl in 2009, this jumped to a dollar share of 8.1%. Nielsen says similar trends are evident for private label crackers, nuts and frozen pizza.

About the survey: Nielsen surveyed more than 28,000 US households to obtain these figures.