What watching the Super Bowl does to your health
Watching sporting events like the Super Bowl can influence our brains and bodies—and not always in a good way
Fans watch the Patriots face off against the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX on February 1, 2015
For American football fans, the Super Bowl is the crescendo of the sporting calendar. Even if your team doesn’t make the big night, watching the game is undeniably exciting, eliciting a combination of yelling, cursing, crying, drinking, praying, cheering and—for some lucky fans—jubilation. That emotional roller-coaster is part of the fun, right? Well, not to rain on anyone’s parade, but the science suggests that big sports events like the Super Bowl could carry some hidden health risks.
All the excitement, unfortunately, doesn’t come without some physiological effects. Watching a game can raise your blood pressure and heart rate—and sporting events are linked to higher rates of cardiac events, such as heart attacks.
In one recent study, researchers found that fans of the German soccer team Arminia Bielefeld—which competed in the German Cup finals for the first time ever in 2025—saw their stress levels rise by 41 percent during the game compared with regular days. The results were published on Thursday in Scientific Reports.
On supporting science journalism
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
“This was a game of a century, kind of a Cinderella story,” says Christian Deutscher, a sports economics professor at Bielefeld University and an author on the study. Using smartwatch data, the researchers monitored fans’ heart rates and stress levels for 10 days before the game and for 10 weeks afterward. Over the course of the study, the day of the game was “by far” the highest-stress day, Deutscher says.
Fans who consumed alcohol tended to have higher heart rates, as did fans who watched the game in person compared to those who watched it on television. And after a heart-wrenching loss to VfB Stuttgart, stress levels among the Arminia Bielefeld fans stayed elevated throughout the day, the study found.
The results echo similar experiments involving American sports fans. In one 2009 study, for instance, researchers saw an increase in cardiovascular-linked deaths in Los Angeles in the days after the Rams lost the 1980 Super Bowl. And when the Raiders, then based in L.A., won the Super Bowl four years later, there was a decrease in all deaths.
The Super Bowl phenomenon parallels another holiday trend—the spike in heart attacks during Christmas and New Year, says Keith Churchwell, a former president of the American Heart Association. “For people with underlying disease,” the stress of these events “puts them at higher risk,” he says. At the same time, people are more likely to forget to take their medications for things like high blood pressure, heart rate or cholesterol. Sports betting can amp up the stress, too, he says.
Watching sports in general isn’t harmful, however. Indeed, there’s solid evidence that sports fandoms can have positive psychological effects. “Like any pastime, there’s going to be pros and cons,” says Daniel Wann, a psychology professor at Murray State University. “Sports fandom is not unique in that.”
According to Wann, people who identify with a local sports team often feel a greater sense of connection to others, which is correlated with higher levels of collective self-esteem and lower levels of loneliness. In a 2024 study Wann and his colleagues surveyed sports lovers about what they get out of being a fan and found that many felt a keen sense of belonging.
“It gives you this ability to meet this innate need we have to belong,” Wann says. “We are very much social creatures.”
To enjoy this Sunday’s Super Bowl safely, Churchwell recommends fans make sure they take their regular medications, avoid drinking too much and eat the healthiest foods possible—and get a good night’s sleep the night before.
For those of us most invested in the game—looking at you, Seattle and New England—a Super Bowl loss can hit hard. To ward off any negative mental health outcomes, Wann recommends that viewers try to remember their team’s entire season and keep in mind why they’re a fan.
“It doesn’t make the outcome less important,” Wann says, “but it gives them other reasons to understand that the outcome is not the only thing that’s important.”
It’s Time to Stand Up for Science
If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.
I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.
If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.
In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.
There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you’ll support us in that mission.