For Canadians, the Super Bowl is about food

Deflategate may have sucked some of the air out of this Sunday’s Super Bowl already, but come game day you can be sure of one thing: Canadians will do plenty of eating as they watch to see if New England quarterback Tom Brady can toss a fully inflated football well enough to defeat the defending champ Seattle Seahawks.

The average Canadian watching the big game this weekend will spend $61 on festivities, a new survey finds.

Most of that amount will go to food and drink. The average Canuck guy, for instance, plans to spend $26 on alcohol and $25 on food, says the survey by RetailMeNot, a Toronto-based digital marketplace operator.

The good news for grocers from the survey is that half of Canadians watching the game will do so from home or at a friend’s or family member’s house.

Thirty-four per cent of respondents say they plan to avoid restaurants and bars because they are too expensive.

More good news for grocers: Canadians–who normally look to save money when buying food–don’t mind blitzing their wallet ahead of the Super Bowl. Only 13 per cent of those surveyed said they look for discounts.

“Canadians are fumbling their budgets” for the Super Bowl,  said Kristen Nelson, spokesperson at RetailMeNot.

One tactic grocers should probably consider: get into defensive formation by promoting their pizza offers. That’s because 21 per cent of men plan to order pizza for the Super Bowl this year.

Overall, 35 per cent of Canadians (and 50 per cent of men) plan to watch the game.

But whether Tom Brady’s team wins or gets deflated by the Seahawks may not matter to most viewers. Twenty per cent of men alone admit that eating and drinking is the main reason they watch the Super Bowl at all.