Of football and Fireball: When the Eagles fly into the Super Bowl, Philly-area fans trade boos for booze

Judging by the lines in the Philadelphia-area Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores over Super Bowl weekend, alcohol and the Eagles are a popular mix.

And Fireball and Surfside are the drinks of choice.

To the surprise of no one, when the Eagles are in the Super Bowl — as they were in 2023 and 2025 — sales of wine and spirits enjoy a healthy spike.

In 2023, when the Eagles lost to the Kansas City Chiefs, the regional sales that weekend came to $7.5 million — a 40% rise over sales in 2022, when the Los Angeles Rams edged the Cincinnati Bengals and Pennsylvanians issued a collective yawn.

The Inquirer obtained data from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board for the last five years of Super Bowl weekends at the state-owned stores in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

In 2024, the year the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia-area sales dropped by 23%.

The numbers were up again for 2025. This year’s two-day sales in the region were 30% higher than the year before. At $7.49 million, sales were just a shade lower than in 2023. Perhaps fans have taken to other forms of relaxation.

Statewide, Super Bowl weekend sales of wine and spirits have followed the same pattern. (For our purposes, Pennsylvania’s other team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, are a nonfactor since they haven’t been in the Super Bowl since 2011, when they lost to the Green Bay Packers.)

The Inquirer also asked the PLCB what people were buying last week. The top seller were those 50-milliliter screw-top bottles of Fireball, a cinnamon whiskey, followed by minis of New Amsterdam vodka and New Amsterdam Pink Whitney pink lemonade vodka. Stateside’s Surfside iced tea and vodka cans and the Surfside variety pack also made the top 10, as did three sizes of Tito’s Handmade Vodka, the 750mL bottles of Hennessy Cognac VS, and mini-size 99 Long Island Iced Tea Schnapps. Pennsylvanians love those minis, which have made regular appearances on the top-seller list.

The PLCB sells all of the state’s wine and spirits to consumers and bars. It administers beer licensing but not sales, which are handled through wholesale distributors.

At McGillin’s Olde Ale House, Philadelphia’s oldest bar (circa 1860), Christopher Mullins Jr. said beer sales have been up about 20% so far this year over the same period last year. He said it’s also important to note that game-day crowds order more lower-alcohol “session” beers. “You’re not going to sit and drink Mad Elf [a Troegs ale that’s 11% ABV], for example, through a game,” Mullins said. “You’re going to drink a 4.3%, like an O’Hara’s stout, or you’re going to have Bud Light or a [Michelob] Ultra, just to keep both your eyes focused on the screen.”

Food sales were also up significantly, over 30%, Mullins Jr. said, especially on days of 3 p.m. kickoffs, when people ordered food both before and after games. “I think people realize they have to eat if they’re going to collapse and not get to work the next day.”