Super Bowl savings can be readily found in supermarket and consumer electronics circulars, but March Madness, another highly social sports event, gets little retail play.
While competing with St. Patrick's Day promotions, March Madness is also more complex than the one-day, two-team Super Bowl event. Starting with 64 teams, the win-or-go-home tournament features 63 games played over a little more than two weeks. To take advantage, retailers might need to react quickly to such turns as underdog winners in their region.
But it's a social occasion and money is spent.
According to a survey of 1,037 consumers from RetailMeNot, Americans on average plan to spend $211 on March Madness-related products and services this year, up $20 from last year. On average, men are willing to spend almost $100 more than women ($248 vs. $155).
Of the expenses, March Madness brackets will be the heavy outlay for many. Fans willing to spend money on bracket entries planned to spend $90 on average.
Socializing presumably takes up the rest of the spend. The most requested snacks at March Madness parties are pizza (67 percent) followed by chips and dip (63 percent), nachos (49 percent), and Buffalo wings (47 percent), according to the survey.
Beyond watching games, many will spend time filling out and obsessing over their March Madness brackets. A study from the American Gaming Association predicted more than 70 million will fill out brackets this year.
At retail, Walmart, Best Buy and others are offering TV specials around the games, but not many other promotions can be found.
On the marketing front, Finish Line is holding a Bracket Challenge for loyalty members with a grand prize winner of $5,000 as well as a #CallYourShot social campaign. More creatively, Music Land in Bel Air, MD, has drawn brackets around 32 legendary guitar riffs to decide on the greatest of all time. (A first-round matchup features AC/DC's "Back in Black" versus Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child.")
- March Madness Is Like Christmas for Sports Fans: RetailMeNot Found That Fans Are Planning to Spend Major Dough on the Big Dance - RetailMeNot/PRNewswire
- March Madness Office Events: What's Your City Eating for the Games? - Seamless
- One in Five Workers Participate in March Madness Office Pools, Finds CareerBuilder Survey - CareerBuilder
- March Madness bets outpace 2016 Spending, Study Finds - The Hill
- Another kind of March madness: Bracketology on great guitar riffs - The Baltimore Sun
- Finish Line Hoists Customer Experience through College Hoops Spring Tournament Activations - The Finish Line
- Riff Madness 2016 - YouTube