In many ways Super Bowl Sunday is like a national holiday -- replete with parties, beer, football, and lots of pizza. Whether it is the social element of eating a pizza pie and watching the big game or that pizza fulfills the essential game-day needs: fast, cheap, and delicious, pizza has become the traditional Super Bowl meal. Millions of viewers will eat pizza. In fact, more pizza is sold on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year.
Pizza behemoths like Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, and Domino have taken notice. They bank on hungry football fans carbing-up and plan to roll out extensive marketing and ad campaigns in the weeks leading up to the big game hoping to cash in. Even frozen pizza and bake-at-home varieties benefit from a 20% lift in sales during the week of Super Bowl Sunday. Some marketing executives have dubbed the battle for market dominance as the “Pizza Bowl.” Companies will do anything to help give them that competitive edge on Super Bowl Sunday: like extending hours, slashing prices and offering game-day promotions, tripling fleets of delivery staff, and unveiling brand new pizza product lines.
Pizza Hut, the biggest of the pizza giants, plans to lay out around $50 million to sponsor the Super Bowl pre-game and fill the national airwaves with around 75 commercials spots. For many Pizza companies the ad time is so astronomical that few will buy ads during the game itself. For some of the smaller to mid-size pizza companies, the common wisdom seems to be that by the time the commercials are airing they hope to already be in consumers’ homes and bellies. Though for some of the leaner local pizzerias stats do indicate an uptick in sales at half-time and a few are focusing on servicing that niche.
No matter how you slice it, pizza has become the perfect food to enjoy with nation’s favorite past time -- football.