Ice Bucket Challenge Boosts UK Ice Cube Sales By 63%

The Ice Bucket Challenge, which involves tipping freezing water over yourself as a stunt to promote awareness and raise money for the ALS Association, has allegedly led to a 63% surge in UK ice cube sales.

The charity, which combats motor neurone disease, has already raised $100m (£61m, €77m) after millions of people across the globe donated to the group.

IRI, a market and shopper information research group, said ice cube value sales rose by 63% between 25 August to 31 August, compared to this time last year and 69% in volume sales.

"While other frozen products like desserts and ice cream have fallen in the last month, ice cube sales have gone up and up, with people spending over £1m per week on them on average over the past four weeks and £1.6m in the final week of August," said Tim Eales, Director of Strategic Insight at IRI.

IRI added that the overall market is worth around £35m annually to the major grocers and the value of sales account for £1.6m in the last week of August.

Hundreds of celebrities including David Beckham, Britney Spears and Microsoft founder Bill Gates have taken part in the dare.

There have been in excess of 2.4 million ice bucket-related videos posted on Facebook, and 28 million people have uploaded, commented on or liked ice bucket-related posts.

On image sharing website Instagram there have been 3.7 million videos uploaded with the hashtags #ALSicebucketchallenge and #icebucketchallenge