Business

Not even a Powerball winner could buy all of America’s Super Bowl chicken

With the price to attend Super Bowl 50 hitting record levels, most Americans will opt for a front-row seat in their living rooms rather than take out a loan for a nosebleed seat in Levi’s Stadium. But staying at home doesn’t mean consumers will skimp on spending.

From upgrading flat-screen TVs to hosting watch parties, Americans will spend a record $15.5 billion on items related to this year’s game, with the average consumer spending $82.19, according to a 2016 survey of more than 7,000 consumers by the National Retail Federation. And the Super Bowl is the second-largest eating day of the year in the US, after Thanksgiving, according to the National Chicken Council. Here is how Super Bowl 50 consumption breaks down, by the numbers.

With about 113.4 million football fans planning to throw or attend a watch party, according to the NRF, food and beverage spending will account for a significant amount of overall consumption. Chips, dips, chicken wings, chili and Tex-Mex food have traditionally been some of the most popular items in the run-up to the game, says Wal-Mart spokesman John Forrest Ales.

Chicken wings are a particularly large category of Super Bowl food spending. About 1.3 billion chicken wings are expected to be consumed during Super Bowl 50 — an amount so large that one of the three winners of the latest $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot’s lump sums would only pay for 76 percent, or 123 million pounds, of it, according to the National Chicken Council.

Beer is one of the more common beverages of choice to wash down a Super Bowl calorie binge, though it may not be the traditional mega brands like Budweiser, Miller or Coors typically nestled in viewers’ koozies this year. Whether it be craft or light, Americans drink as much as 325 million gallons of beer — enough to fill 500 Olympic-size swimming pools — during the Super Bowl, according to 2014 calculations by the Stevens Institute of Technology.

Even if you’re not attending the game, team apparel is still a popular segment of consumption. Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers fans are planning on purchasing up to 20.9 million new items, according to the NRF survey. However, fans looking for a discount should be wary of counterfeit merchandise — government officials seized more than $19.5 million worth of unlicensed goods before last year’s Super Bowl, according to software company MarkMonitor, which specializes in online brand protection. Consumers should avoid sites with highly discounted items or websites with misspelled brand names when suiting up for the game, the company says.

With the savings from not buying a game ticket, some fans are upgrading their view at home. An estimated 8.6 million televisions are expected to be purchased for the game, the NRF reports. Prices for 50- to 59-inch televisions on Amazon.com range from $370 to about $6,500 and from $320 to about $7,200 on Wal-Mart’s website.

These costs may be slightly counteracted by the electricity consumption saved by “TV pooling,” or more viewers watching the game per TV and using fewer other appliances due to social events like watch parties, according to a study by software company Opower, which specializes in utilities. Overall electricity consumption decreased 5 percent during the 2012 Super Bowl, causing a $3.1 million reduction in national energy expenses, the company found.