Can the Super Bowl predict the stock market?

Super Bowl Sunday is almost here, which means Wall Street is reviving its favorite superstition.

It all started back in the 1970s, when a sportswriter noticed an interesting phenomenon: When a team from the National Football Conference won the Super Bowl, the stock market went up that year, and when a team from the American Football Conference won, the stock market went down.

Investors dubbed this the Super Bowl Indicator, and following the logic, this year investors should be rooting for the Seattle Seahawks. It seemed to hold true last year: After the NFC’s Philadelphia Eagles won the championship, the S&P 500 gained 9.5% through the rest of 2025.

Obviously, nobody should actually be making investing decisions based on a silly urban investing legend—in fact, it turns out that since 1978, the S&P 500 has risen in 74% of the years an NFC team won, while the index rose 86% of the time an AFC team won. So don’t feel bad rooting for the New England Patriots on Sunday.

Carson Group strategist Ryan Detrick has another take on the trend: which team wins doesn’t matter as much as how much they win by. “That’s right, when it is a single digit win in the Super Bowl, the S&P 500 is up less than 7% on average and higher about 62.5% of the time. A double-digit win? Things jump to 11% and 80%. Last year the Eagles beat the Chiefs by 18, which was a clue it would be a good year,” Detrick wrote.

The real economic impact

The Super Bowl Indicator is a myth, but the economic impact of the big game is very real. 213.1 million US adults will be tuning in to the Super Bowl this year, and the event is expected to generate about $20.2 billion in consumer spending, largely on drinks and snack food.

Don’t forget about the ads, either: expect a slew of high-priced ads for beverage companies, sports betting, and of course, a feud between AI titans.

We really can’t even have one day off from the AI wars.—LB