Whether it’s a hot dog, burger or wings, NFL fans and those who bet on the NFL often enjoy watching their teams with a calorific snack in hand. But which fan base consumes the most calories on game days over the course of the season?

We’ve used recent football research data (From Fan to Fat, Cornil and Chandon, 2013) to reveal the NFL’s biggest comfort eaters.

Consolation Calories For Jags Fans

Recent research suggests that football fans are more likely to overeat when their team loses, whether out of frustration or in a bid to find a sense of comfort. In fact, fans consume roughly 10% more calories than usual the day after a defeat. With this in mind, we’ve uncovered the NFL fans that eat the most calories over the course of a season.

Witnessing just one win for their team over the entirety of the 2020-2021 NFL season, commiserations were on the menu almost every week for fans of the Jacksonville Jaguars. This led to Jaguars fans consuming more post-game calories than fans of any other team, eating 9.06% more than the national average the day after game day. This equates to 5,220 additional calories over the course of the season.

Not far behind, fans of the 2-14 New York Jets were the second biggest post-game eaters, consuming 4,680 (+8.13%) more calories than the national average across the 16 game days.

Fans of the Atlanta Falcons and Houston Texans tie for third, with both sets of fans consuming 3,600 calories (6.25%) more than the national average last season. In a tie for fifth, consuming 3,240 (+5.63%) more post-game calories than the typical American, are fans of the Cincinnati Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles.

Further down the rankings you find a number of other NFL teams, including the San Francisco 49ers (+4.38%) and the Arizona Cardinals (+2.50%). For Cardinals fans, game day is about to include betting, as well as football and food, with Arizona sports betting set to go live in time for the start of the NFL season on Sept. 9.

Chiefs Fans Eat Less

Just as NFL fans are more likely to eat more if their team loses, they’re more inclined to cut out the calories after a win – by 5%, in fact!

Fans of the Kansas City Chiefs take the top spot, enjoying the healthiest post-game calorie count. They ate 1,800 calories (-3.13%) fewer than the national average over the 2020-2021 season. This comes as the Chiefs finished with the best regular season record, losing just twice.

In a tie for second, with a calorie consumption that’s 1,260 (-2.19%) below the national post-game average, are fans of the 13-3 Green Bay Packers and Buffalo Bills. Fans of the Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints finished in a tie for fourth, eating 720 (-1.25%) fewer post-game calories than the typical American.

Meanwhile, fans of the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers only consumed 180 fewer post-game calories across the whole of the 2020-2021 season than the average U.S. adult. That comes despite the Buccaneers losing five times during the regular season.

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Methodology

To determine how many calories each NFL fan base consumed in relation to the average person, we first determined the daily caloric intake for the typical American adult: 3,600. We then multiplied this by 16 to reflect each game day during the 2020-2021 regular season (57,600).

The next step was to gather data around fan calorie consumption after a win or a loss. Academic research (From Fat to Fan, Cornil and Chandon, 2013) shows that people ingest about 10% more calories (3,960) than usual after a loss, and 5% fewer (3,420) after a win.

Finally, we collected win and loss data for each NFL team during the 2020-2021 regular season and calculated the overall post-game calorie consumption throughout the year. For instance, Jaguars: (3,960 x 15) + (3,420 x 1) = 62,820. If you subtract the typical intake of 57,600, it’s revealed that Jags fans consume 5,220 more calories than the average American, which is a 9.06% increase.