News

Super Bowl Sunday fare? Depends where you are

February 1, 2019

According to Cardlytics, Super Bowl Sunday is far from being all about pizza, though that dish does reign supreme for the beer bottle-strewn tables of Super Bowl parties everywhere. In fact, in the home of one of the teams in this year's game, the New England Patriots, pizza did indeed dominate Sunday food plans in Boston, where orders spike up 187 percent over an average week. But in the home of the Rams, Los Angeles, it was all about the tacos with a 37 percent increase in spend over annual averages, a news release said.

Cardlytics partners with more than 2,000 financial institutions to run their digital rewards programs, and then uses proprietary insights to understand where and when consumers spend their money. Spending data for the Sunday game show that football fans overall spent 12 percent more nationally during the 2018 championship over that spent in 2017. 

The company found also that in this year's host city of Atlanta, chicken made a big run with a 128 percent boost in sales. Those poultry-laden dishes also make up the fastest-growing food choice for football fans, with spend surging 19 percent nationally in 2018 compared to 2017.

"The February championship is an exciting time, not only for the game and the commercials, but also in the all-important area of dining," Cardlytics SVP and Group Head of Restaurants Matt Drewes, said in the release. 

Other key findings around food purchases during the week leading up to Super Bowl include:

• Spend grew 29 percent in Atlanta and 31 percent in all of Georgia from 2017 to 2018.
• Tennessee (27 percent growth), Virginia (24 percent growth), and Florida (20 percent growth) experienced three of the largest spikes in spend for 2018 compared to 2017.
• Sioux Falls, South Dakota (15 percent decrease), Mankato, Kansas (12 percent decrease), and Topeka, Kansas (11 percent decrease) saw the most notable decreases in spend from 2017 to 2018.
• Chicago and St. Louis are the only two cities whose residents preferred to eat sandwiches on game day, respectively spending 85 percent and 73 percent more on this item the week of the championship than average.

To come up with all those number, Cardlytics used data on U.S. consumer spend at barbecue, premium burger, chicken, taco, pizza, and sandwich locations during Super Bowl week in 2017 and 2018, compared to annual averages captured between Jan. 5, 2017 and Jan. 2, 2019.