Cricket to Diwali: Mastercard helps unravel the impact of major events on consumer spending
In India, we bleed blue. Cricket is enmeshed with our childhood memories, who we choose as friends, what we do on weekends, and how we spend our money. So much so, that cricket matches in India create their own little uptick in economic activity. An analysis of aggregated and anonymised Mastercard data found that the IPL series played in 2023 led to a 25% increase in in-person average daily spend in restaurants during match days vs. non-match days.
That makes sense: a large-scale sporting event like the multi-week extravaganza of the ICC World Cup brings together friends and family to cheer for their teams, gives companies a great option for outings, and of course, brings fans in from all over the globe. Restaurants and sports merchandise aside, this also greatly boosts hotels, airlines, car rentals and taxi services. The ICC Men's T20 World Cup hosted in Australia in 2022, fueled growth in spending in hotels and restaurants by outbound travelers from South Asia from early October to mid November.
While cricket makes for large numbers, other sporting events also see a similar uptick in retail, lodging and restaurant spending, as do concerts, large conventions and trade shows, fairs and exhibitions. Brands can leverage major events to capitalize on the increased traffic by extending operating hours to accommodate shopping before or after the event; organize contests and giveaways; launch targeted advertising campaigns that piggyback on the popularity of these events; and of course, prompt event specific offers.
A convenience retailer capitalized on the surge in spending during a major televised sporting event weekend using a new digital food offer that provided a discount for purchasing large meal bundles during the event. Using Mastercard Test & Learn® to measure the effectiveness of the campaign, the platform first identified control customers that behave in lockstep with test customers based on historical spend pattern and loyalty tier, enabling confidence in the accuracy of results. Test & Learn® then segmented the results based on the strongest drivers of performance to identify opportunities to optimize similar initiatives in the future
Test & Learn® measured a 2% increase in transactions as a result of the offer and found that it was most successful for two customer groups: customers who spent less than $10 on their last transaction and lapsed customers who hadn't shopped with the retailer in the last 30 days. These insights helped drive an incremental $600,000 in sales from the next two-week campaign.