According to Advertising Age Research, last year’s Super Bowl had 88,637,000 viewers (138.9 million according to the NFL) at 43,433,000 homes watching commercials that cost $2,100,000 for 30 seconds of air time. That’s $23.69 per viewer over the course of the game, but less than 25¢ per 30 seconds. The first Super Bowl ads cost $42,000 ($239,167 inflation adjusted) for 30 seconds. This year, the price is up to $2.25 million. What will be eaten during this year’s 62 half-minute events?  Pizza. Super Bowl Sunday has evolved into a national party day:  The average number of people at a Super Bowl party is 17. More pizza will be sold Feb. 1 than any other day of 2004:

• Domino’s will deliver about 1.2 million pizzas, 42% more than on a regular Sunday, and its drivers will cover 4 million miles.
• Papa John’s expects its business will jump 70% in some areas.
• Grocery store sales of Kraft’s DiGiorno and Tombstone frozen pizzas typically jump 20% during Super Bowl week.

Pizza Hut, the world’s most powerful and influential pizza seller, will unveil what it considers its biggest product idea in years: four square, topped-to-order pizzas in one large pizza box, which, at $11.99, costs about the same as a regular large pizza. It will spend $50 million to launch the product, and fill the national airwaves with as many as 75 commercials throughout game day.

Personally, while pizza is probably my favorite food, I hate Pizza Hut pizza. And although their franchises originally didn’t want the new pizza, in part because they had to get new equipment to make it and it may reduce the number of two pizza orders, it should be good for them. Now it’s not only the edges of the pizza that won’t have topping, the lines separating the four parts will also be empty. What a great way to sell bread at a premium.