By Shelby Shank
Field Editor

The National Chicken Council (NCC) released its annual Chicken Wing Report, projecting Americans to eat 1.48 billion chicken wings while watching the Patriots and Seahawks battle for the Lombardi Trophy this weekend.

That total marks an increase of 10 million wings compared to last year’s game.

“For football fans looking to add protein to their spreads at an affordable price, wings are king of Super Bowl menus,” Tom Super, NCC spokesperson, said.

To put 1.48 billion wings into perspective:

  • Laid end to end, they would stretch roughly 27 times from Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, to Lumen Field in Seattle, Washington.
  • They could circle the planet about three times.
  • Eating one wing every 30 seconds would take until about the year 3420 to finish them all or roughly the same time since the fall of the Roman Empire.
  • More than 3,400 fully loaded semi-trucks would be needed to haul that many wings, forming a convoy nearly 40 miles long.

Demand for wings surged nationwide in the last four weeks leading up to Sunday’s Big Game. Chicken wing unit sales climbed 19.8% year-over-year, while dollar sales increased 11.4%, reflecting strong seasonal and game-day demand.

Playoff cities saw sharp increase in chicken wings sales.

In Seattle, retail wing sales increased 8.6% in dollars, 26.3% in units and 22.2% in volume. Boston also saw an increase in sales, up 4.4% in dollars, 17.1% in units and 10.9% in volume.

Among the four cities that played in the NFC and AFC Championship games, Los Angeles ordered the most wings per person at 4 times per year, beating out Boston, Seattle and Denver.

Retail prices are also giving fans something to cheer about. Fresh wing prices are down 2.8% year-over-year, averaging $3.47 per pound based on a four-week moving average from Circana, according to Wells Fargo’s Super Bowl Food Report.

Lower prices are largely due to U.S. broiler growers increasing domestic production by 2.2% in 2025, aided by lower feed cots.

Despite the price dip, cold storage inventories remain tight. U.S. Department of Agriculture reports 57 million pounds of wings in cold storage at the end of November, the lowest total in November in more than a decade, indicating restaurants, bars and retailers stocked up early for the Big Game.

“The bottom line is, wings will be available in plenty. They’ll be affordable, and they’ll be delicious,” Super said.