WASHINGTON — Super Bowl Sundays are one of the most-watched sporting events in the world. Even non-football fans can enjoy the extravagant halftime shows and the highly-anticipated commercials that air during the big game.
Not only is it a big day for television, it’s also reportedly the second-largest day for food consumption in the U.S., behind Thanksgiving Day.
Why is the Super Bowl on a Sunday?
Ever since the championship game’s inception on Jan. 15, 1967, the Super Bowl has always been played on Sundays.
For years, fans of the sporting event have signed online petitions to move the Super Bowl to Saturday.
One of the more recent attempts to try and convince the league to change the big game was a Florida high school senior’s petition, which received over 144,000 signatures on Change.org.
Mondays after the Super Bowl are notorious for the number of employees calling out of work.
In 2023, a survey by the Workforce Institute found 18.1 million employees said they planned to miss work the day after the Super Bowl. More than 3 million admitted they planned to call in sick even though they weren’t actually feeling ill.
Additionally, 4.7 million workers admitted that they planned to “ghost” their employers and skip work without notice on that Monday.
One reason the National Football League is adamant about keeping the Super Bowl on Sundays is due to TV ratings, according to past comments from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
During a 2018 interview on “The Kyle Brandt Football Experience,” Goodell said it really comes down to TV ratings.
“The reason we haven’t done it in the past is simply just from an audience standpoint. The audiences on Sunday night are so much larger,” Goodell said in 2018. “Fans want to have the best opportunity to be able to see the game and we want to give that to them, so Sunday night is a better night.”
Last year’s Super Bowl, LVII, had 115 million viewers, making it not only the most watched Super Bowl in history, but also the most popular TV program of all-time in the U.S.
A report from Sportsbook Review found the U.S. will experience over $5 billion drop in workforce productivity in the week of and day after the Super Bowl. But it also found moving the game back one day could lead to a decrease in consumer spending between 20 and 45%.
When is the Super Bowl?
Super Bowl LVIII (which stands for Super Bowl 58) kicks off on Sunday, Feb. 11 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada, around 6:30 p.m. Eastern (5:30 p.m. Central Time, 4:30 p.m. Mountain Time and 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time).