Economic Lessons from the Super Bowl (Beyond Tickets and Ads)
A Look at Value of the Game to Society, Sports Betting, and More
The Super Bowl is one of the top cultural activities in America. It is also a massive economics event! Last year we covered four economic topics related to the Super Bowl. Today we cover a few more topics including the NFL’s Dominance as a brand, the betting markets, and the value to society of the game.
Let’s start with the value to society that people get from watching the game.
The Value of the Super Bowl to Society is Enormous
Americans can watch the Super Bowl, along with the commercials and halftime show, on freely available TV channels. For most, there is no additional cost to watch the Super Bowl. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value to people, however.
The fact that the game can be watched for free but is so valuable means the Super Bowl provides what economists call consumer surplus - which is the value consumers receive above and beyond the price paid. This value is large!
For a thought exercise on how valuable the game is, think about how much money would you need to be paid to “not” watch the game? This amount would represent your consumer surplus. For some of you, maybe you don’t care much about the game and the answer is zero. But for others I suspect to give up watching the game, along with the time with friends, the commercials, etc., you would need to be paid more than $100 and for some it would be more than $500 or $1000.
Let’s assume the average consumer surplus is $100. Given about 130 million Americans will watch the game this year then the value of the Super Bowl to society would be approximately $13 billion!
Americans will wager A LOT on the Super Bowl
Last year, Americans were estimated to wager almost $1.4 billion on the Super Bowl through legal markets. The amount is much higher when you count informal office pool and illegal betting, with some estimates coming it at over $20 billion.
Naturally, the amount bet through legal markets is just the amount wagered - not the amount the house will win. But on average, sports gambling sites will do well on Super Bowl Sunday, and competition to bring in gamblers is driving companies like Fanduel, DraftKings, and BetMGM to spend (advertise) heavily in order to acquire customers.
There is Social Value to Betting Lines and Prediction Markets
Point spreads and betting odds aren’t just randomly chosen; they reflect the collective beliefs of thousands (sometimes millions) of participants putting real money on the line. As new information becomes available—injuries, weather forecasts, lineup changes, or even shifts in public sentiment—betting lines move to incorporate it.
If you’ve followed prediction markets in politics, you know that they are more accurate than polling data. For sports betting, this accuracy doesn’t mean that if the point spread is 3 points that the favored team will win by 3 points. But, you can bet that about half the time the favored team would win by 3 or more and half the time it would not.
This has value for a couple reasons. First, if you want a prediction, it is very difficult to outperform the betting lines in the long run. If you hear someone laying out a compelling case why one side or another would win a bet, you’d do well to understand that betting against the spread is almost certainly a 50/50 proposition. Television analysts may be entertaining, but betting markets have a built-in discipline as incorrect beliefs are costly. Over time, that pressure pushes prices toward surprisingly accurate predictions.
Second, if you do wish to place a wager, you could pick whichever side you prefer, place a bet, and know you’re likely getting fair odds. Third, if you’re in a casual betting pool at a Super Bowl Party, perhaps on who might score, or final outcomes, you could use the betting odds to your advantage when completing your choices.
Finally, given the house takes a percentage (called the juice), it is almost impossible to be a winning sports better in the long-run. If you’re looking to earn money, putting funds into the stock market has had a great track record over time. Gambling on sports - not so much.
The NFL is Dominating TV Markets Beyond Just the Super Bowl - and the Super Bowl Ad Prices Show It!
In 2025, fourteen of the top fifteen televised events in the US were NFL games (the other was game 7 of the World Series). The Thanksgiving game between the Chiefs and Cowboys set a regular season record for viewership at over 57 million And people watched that game for 11.7 billion minutes. People watched Netflix’s hit show Stranger Things for 11.8 billion minutes - over the entire month! However you look at it - the NFL dominates.
Because of it’s power and viewership, the NFL is able to charge $8 million per ad and it is asking companies to buy another $8 million of ads on other sports.
Your first point about being paid not to watch the game reminded me of an experiment Craig Palsson ran, where he paid people to watch Cats instead of Star Wars. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB_p-A5HgYI.