"It's estimated that there will be 50 million tailgaters this year at college and pro games, and collectively those tailgaters will spend between $7 and $15 billion on their activities," says Dr. Walden, an economist with North Carolina Cooperative Extension. "Furthermore, these figures have all doubled in the past eight years. So this is really a growth industry.

"Another element here is tailgaters are really a retailer's dream because the major of them are, studies show, high-income folks," Walden adds. "So this is why you see a lot of ads now being targeted to tailgaters for different kinds of products and services to use while you are tailgating because those folks have a lot of money to spend.

"And this," Walden concludes, "is also an interesting fact about tailgaters: TVs are marketed to tailgaters because over a third of the people who are in the parking lot tailgating never go into the stadium."