TV sales fall short of the end zone during the lead-up to the Super Bowl

The most watched television event of 2016 is almost here sports fans, with the Panthers and Broncos taking the field this Sunday. Reports are circulating that many Americans plan to purchase a new television to view the Super Bowl in big screen glory. While retailers like Best Buy and Amazon are wholeheartedly promoting television super-sales, data shows  there’s not a big increase in online television purchases during the month leading-up to the Super Bowl.

Online television purchases during the month leading to the Super Bowl in 2015 accounted for six percent of total television sales, lower than the past two Super Bowl seasons.

When shoppers decide to purchase a TV during Super Bowl season, they mostly shop with Amazon and Best Buy. In 2015, Best Buy outpaced the online-only retailer, with television sales growing by 7 percent. Last year 40 percent of TVs that were purchased during the Super Bowl season were ordered at Best Buy, while only 15 percent of sales were made with Amazon.

With the urgency of getting a TV shipped on time for the big game, more shoppers are opting to buy their television online and pick it up in-store. In 2015 click and carry orders grew by 7 percent, and represented 22 percent of all Super Bowl TV sales. Target’s shoppers were most keen to picking their new televisions up in-store, with 52 percent of their shoppers opting to click and carry their new big screens.

With declining prices on TV’s, customers are possibly purchasing bigger screens. In 2013 33 percent of TVs purchased had screens that were 30-39 inches, hardly big enough to see the your team’s jerseys. For the past two years customers punted the small screens, and favored larger TV's. In 2015 over 31 percent of television sales were on tubes that had screens between 40-49 inches.  In the week leading up to Super Bowl 49, the 50-59 inch screens spiked.

While we’re sure that everyone loves to watch the Super Bowl, 40 percent of shoppers who purchase TV's during lead-up to the big game make less than 50 thousand dollars a year. These shoppers, not surprisingly, are mostly men.

With a panel of over 4 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.

Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.

Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world.