Philadelphia and Minneapolis restaurants and bars scored touchdowns during Super Bowl LII, with the top revenue spikes across the 30 cities with NFL teams. Boston, however, saw a dip in revenue.
Philadelphia restaurants saw a 10 percent increase in revenue during the Super Bowl, which culminated in the Philadelphia Eagles besting the New England Patriots in a historic 41-33 game in Minneapolis.
Tech company Womply analyzed transactions at restaurants and bars and compared Super Bowl Sunday to an average Sunday. Womply looked at 450 Philadelphia businesses.
Minneapolis restaurants and bars also saw positive effects of hosting the Super Bowl; businesses saw a 33 percent increase in total revenue, according to data given to the Philadelphia Business Journal by Womply, which monitors transaction data at over 4 million small businesses.
Of the cities with NFL teams, Minneapolis and Philadelphia saw the two highest spikes in revenue this year. Boston restaurants and bars saw 27 percent less in revenue during the Super Bowl, according to Womply.
Nationally, there was a 22 percent decrease in revenue across the 30 NFL cities.
The Super Bowl last year was poor in terms of revenue generation for Philadelphia restaurants and bars, although NFL cities do better in revenue during the Super Bowl compared with cities that don’t have an NFL team.
Atlanta restaurants and bars saw a 9 percent decrease in revenue last year; the Atlanta Falcons lost to the New England Patriots. It was gangbusters for Boston businesses, which saw the largest spike across the 30 NFL teams at 58 percent.
Minneapolis restaurants this year mirrored Houston — the host city last year — with increases in revenue.
“Although we can’t specifically answer why the cities fared the way they did, we do see the same the trend — more dramatically this year — that we saw last year with people preferring to watch the Super Bowl with friends and family at home,” Womply spokesman Dan Lalli told the Business Journal. “Also, with an overall decline in popularity for the NFL this year, more individuals may have passively watched the game from home instead of going out.”
The Patriots lost to the Eagles this year, so not as many people celebrating at local bars after the Super Bowl could be the cause for the slow day, Lalli said.
“Whereas in Philadelphia, celebrating post game and making big plans for the game resulted in an above average day for local bars and restaurants,” Lalli said.
Comcast’s NBCUniversal, which aired the game on NBC, saw a slight 7 percent dip in ratings during the game compared with last year when Fox aired it. Last year’s game had 103.4 million viewers, the lowest ratings for a Super Bowl since 2009 — in line with the downward trend in NFL ratings overall.