Super Bowl Spending Expected to Deflate, Survey Finds

This year’s Super Bowl LX will be a bi-coastal affair, with teams from Seattle and the Boston area competing. While that could help give the event viewership a boost, even The Big Game on Feb. 8 is not immune to the economic uncertainties rattling the real world, a new survey from LendingTree has found.

That online questionnaire, which gathered responses from 2000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 80 on Jan. 2, showed that 80% Americans plan to watch the Super Bowl, up from 75% a year ago. “In an enormously polarized time, few things unite Americans like football,” survey summary noted.

But while more people say they plan to tune in this year, they don’t expect to open their wallets quite as wide as they did last year, spending an average of $129, down from $142 last year. Men ($168) expect to spend nearly twice as much as women ($87).

Those figures come amid an overall dip in spending. As for gameday celebrations, 21% percent say they plan to spend less on the Super Bowl this year than last, while 19% expect to spend more and 61% expect to spend about the same. The most popular purchases by viewers include food and beverages (71%), clothing or accessories (20%) and streaming subscriptions (18%).

Click here for more from the LendingTree survey.