Doing the numbers on New Year’s Eve
Bed times, ball drops, public drinking and a very, very expensive Uber.
11,875 pounds
The weight of the ball set to drop in Times Square at midnight. This year’s time ball is decorated with 32,256 light bulbs, compared to 100 on the first ball to drop in New York back in 1907.
3,000 pounds
Speaking of Times Square, that’s how much confetti will be thrown out when that ball drops.
19
That’s how many cities allow public drinking in some fashion, including New Orleans; Lincoln, Nebraska; Las Vegas and Erie, Pennsylvania. The Huffington Post has a map and a history of public drinking laws in the U.S.
50x
That’s Uber’s maximum surge pricing multiplier. It’s a ceiling they’ve never actually hit, save for one experiment in Sweden. Still, the car service expects Wednesday night to be among its busiest ever, and the company advises requesting a ride before midnight or after 2:30 a.m. to avoid peak rates.
71.2 percent
The portion of Jawbone Up fitness tracker users who are awake at midnight on New Year’s, lower than most other countries with a high number of Up users.
$7.3 billion
That’s how much ESPN is paying to broadcast seven college football playoff games a year over 12 years. The first in 2015 is the Rose Bowl, starting at 5 p.m. Thursday.
