Super Bowl Saturday: Spending, TV Ratings Would Plummet – But Beer Sales Would Soar

What would happen if the biggest spectacle in North American sports was moved from Sunday to Saturday? James Bisson examines the impact the one-day change would have in a number of areas – and while some industries would suffer dearly, the prognosis isn't all bad.

Key findings

• Consumer spending on the big game would plummet by between 20 and 45%
• TV viewership would drop by nearly 20 million viewers, resulting in a $104 million drop in ad revenue
• Office productivity would surge by nearly $4 billion due to a significant drop in day-after-Super Bowl lateness and absences
• Beer consumption would rise well above the $1 billion presently spent annually on Super Bowl Sunday
• Traffic accidents would rise measurably, based on major Saturday celebrations producing 31% more wrecks and 42% more fatalities than Sunday events.

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Raise your hand if you've ever found yourself overindulging in Super Bowl revelry on a Sunday night in February, only to wake up the next morning and either immediately regret it as you prepared for work, or call in sick with zero hesitation.

That ... is a lot of raised hands.

The pinnacle of the National Football League season is a fixture of the second Sunday in February, but some have wondered if it might be better for fans to hold the game on a Saturday instead. The majority of viewers have work on Monday, you see – which restricts their ability to really let loose with the celebrating, if you know what we mean.

For what it's worth, the question of moving the Super Bowl Saturday has been asked at the league's highest level – and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has already shot it down.

"That has been around for a long time, people have talked about that," Goodell said on "The Kyle Brandt Football Experience" in December 2018. "The reason we haven't done it in the past is simply just from an audience standpoint. The audiences on Sunday night are so much larger. Fans want to have the best opportunity to be able to see the game and we want to give that to them, so Sunday night is a better night."

It might be true that Sunday viewing audiences are traditionally larger than Saturday viewership for regular NFL games or programming in general, but this is the freaking Super Bowl! Are we so certain that people wouldn't flock to bars and televisions en masse, knowing they have an entire extra day to recover from unleashing their wild sides?

We examined five key areas to determine whether the shift from Super Bowl Sunday to Super Bowl Saturday would have a positive or negative impact. Here's what we found:

Consumer spending: 📉

People spend a lot of money on Super Bowl festivities. Whether you've ponied up for tickets to the game, you're planning a night out with friends, or you're hosting the mother of all Super Bowl parties, the biggest game on the NFL schedule brings out the cash and credit cards.

Here's a look at how Super Bowl spending has grown over the past 15+ years:

Sources: https://nrf.com/research-insights/holiday-data-and-trends/super-bowl/super-bowl-data-center | https://nrf.com/research-insights/holiday-data-and-trends/super-bowl | https://www.calculator.net/inflation-calculator.html

For the purpose of this research, we investigated patterns of spending on two important family U.S. holidays: Independence Day and Halloween. Data was gathered for each holiday for every year were data was available. The year-over-year change was calculated on each occasion the respective holiday was in a Sunday or Saturday.

Independence Day

Halloween

Source: https://nrf.com/

Based on the above data, it's clear that the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer their holidays on a Sunday over a Saturday. And changing the Super Bowl to a Saturday, the day the NCAA schedules the March Madness Final Four, could have equally devastating effects on retail establishments that rely on game-related purchases to help their bottom lines.

Assuming Super Bowl spending declines follow the same patterns we see here, we should expect a decrease of between 20 and 45% by moving the game back one day. Whether a flag-draped patriot, a grown adult dressed like a pomegranate, or a die-hard fan of one of the Super Bowl teams, people like their celebrations on Sunday – and they let their wallets do the talking.

Here's a look at the amount by which spending would drop at both ends of that range for 2025:

A Super Bowl Saturday could see viewers spend up to $6.3 billion less, punctuated by a drop of $4.85 billion in food and beverage expenditure. TV, furniture, apparel and decoration budgets would also plummet by moving the Big Game back one day.

TV ratings and ad revenue: 📉

It's no secret that Saturday and Sunday couldn't be more different when it comes to overall television ratings.

Sunday is one of the hottest viewing nights of the week, and networks take full advantage by loading up on a wide variety of show types (the most popular of which from September to January is NFL football). By comparison, Saturday generates the lowest television ratings of the week; if your favorite show is rescheduled to a Saturday, you'd better make peace with the fact that it's probably a goner.

Here's a look at Super Bowl TV viewership and ad revenue over the past 15+ years:

Source: Wikipedia

A recent Nielsen study reports that 125 million people are tuned in to something every Sunday night, a 16% lift over Saturday's viewing audience. Assuming those trends would carry over to Super Bowl viewership numbers, last year's marquee matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs would have drawn nearly 20 million fewer TV viewers.

While the impact on ad revenue isn't necessarily as linear, a similar decline there would have resulted in a $104 million drop for Super Bowl 58.

While the one-off nature and sheer spectacle of the Super Bowl would almost certainly draw more eyeballs than your run-of-the-mill Saturday night programming, it's difficult to see a Saturday NFL championship game comparing favorably to the same event being held on a Sunday – even if Taylor Swift is involved.

Work productivity: 📈

If it's any consolation (it isn't), a Super Bowl on a Saturday would make bosses a lot happier.

There's no shortage of studies available on the impact of the Super Bowl on both week-of and day-after productivity; here's a look at the Super Bowl and day-after productivity and absenteeism:

(Sources listed at bottom of article)

• An estimated 16.5 million Americans who watch Super Bowl 59 will likely not go to work on Monday.
• Another 6.4 million employees say they will either show up late to work the day after the Super Bowl, or leave early. Combine the two groups, and we're talking nearly 23 million people who will either miss part of a day, or not show up at all – covering nearly one in five employed Americans.
• An estimated 21.9 million Americans say they'll be working on Super Bowl Sunday, but will watch and/or talk about the game with colleagues. And one-third of the workforce believe they'll be less productive at work because of the Super Bowl distraction.

Add it all up, and Challenger estimates that American workforces will see a $6.5 billion drop in productivity the week of (and day after) the Super Bowl.

Based on the Challenger research, Monday absences, lateness/early departures and post-game discussions account for $3.7 billion of that figure. And that doesn't include the tens of millions of Americans slated to work Sunday who will be spending at least part of their time on the clock watching the Big Game.

By moving the game back one day, businesses will have far fewer employees calling in with mysterious ailments on the following Monday.

Alcohol consumption: 📈

If there's any Super Bowl subsection that probably wouldn't mind seeing the Big Game held on a Saturday, it's Big Beer.

According to a 2023 study from Fintech:

• American spend approximately $1.3 billion in beer in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, and another $1 billion the day of the game.
• 41% of viewers planned to drink beer during the Eagles-Chiefs encounter, compared with just 12% who had opted for wine.
• Americans drink more than 325 million gallons of the cold stuff on Super Bowl Sunday, which amounts to 128 ounces for every age-suitable American adult. That's a lot of suds.

Additionally, this National Library of Medicine report suggests that 68.2% of drinkers consume alcohol on an average Saturday, while only 28.4% do so on Sunday.

Let's bring this back to the opening paragraph: Imagine, instead of having to weigh the dread of a truly rough Monday morning at work, you could imbibe guilt-free for the entirety of Super Bowl Saturday (and perhaps even before, and definitely after).

Even with beer prices having climbed in recent years (we saw an 11% increase alone between Super Bowls 56 and 57), it's hard to imagine fans won't make beer consumption an even bigger part of their Big Game experience.

Traffic accident potential: 📈

High-revelry days unfortunately produce the most traffic accidents, generally caused by intoxication, fatigue, distraction, or a combination of the three.

Here's a look at the average number of U.S. motorist accidents, the number of people involved, and the total fatalities for the average Super Bowl Sunday, compared with the previous three instances that both Independence Day and Hallowe'en have fallen on a Saturday:

The Saturday celebrations come at a much steeper cost when it comes to traffic accidents, with the three Independence Day Saturdays averaging 139 accidents involving 353 people and resulting in 151 fatalities. The three Hallowe'en Saturdays averaged 120 accidents, 271 people and 134 fatalities.

We don't just see more fatal accidents during more celebratory nights, as shown here in a breakdown of 2022 auto deaths by day of the week:

2022 auto fatalities by day

• Monday: 5,372
• Tuesday: 5,265
• Wednesday: 5,469
• Thursday: 5,656
• Friday: 6,472
• Saturday: 7,682
• Sunday: 6,618

As you might expect, Saturday is the most dangerous day of the week on the roads – and the difference between Saturday and Sunday is magnified when major party days fall on a Saturday.

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Productivity and absenteeism source list

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/super-bowl-monday-could-cost-companies-roughly-4-billion

https://workforceinstitute.org/super-bowl-survey-will-we-see-a-spike-in-absenteeism

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/super-bowl-2024-much-productivity-160346632.html

https://www.ukg.com/about-us/newsroom/record-188-million-us-employees-may-miss-work-super-bowl-monday-runaway-absence-sunday-night-also-likely

https://www.ukg.com/about-us/newsroom/ukg-estimated-161-million-us-employees-miss-work-super-bowl-monday-millions-more

https://www.challengergray.com/blog/do-we-need-a-super-bowl-monday-holiday-now-more-than-ever

https://www.challengergray.com/blog/super-bowl-related-distractions-absences-could-cost-employers-4-billion

https://workcare.com/employers-should-expect-productivity-lapses-post-super-bowl/