Super Bowl Sunday was a success, though maybe not for the San Francisco 49ers fans. But if we are judging success by wings consumed, it definitely was a win for our industry.

According to the National Chicken Council, chicken wing consumption was estimated at 1.45 billion while watching the Super Bowl. The NCC 2024 Wing report put this number into some perspective: 1.45 billion wings are enough for every man, woman, and child to eat 4 wings each; if the Chiefs coach Andy Reid ate 50 wings a day, it would take him 79,452 years to eat all the wings consumed on Super Bowl Sunday; the total amount of wings consumed in one day on Super Bowl Sunday is enough to place 693 wings on every seat in all 30 NFL stadiums. Just WOW. You can’t argue with Tom Super at NCC when he said, “Football is great. Wings are great. But they’re even better together.”

Chicken wings became really popular during my high school days (go 80s!), when our industry teamed up with restaurants and found that wings were easily shareable, inexpensive, and easy to mix with spicy and flavorful sauces. Eating wings and drinking beer became affordable and popular fun at restaurants and sports bars while watching football. Even though wings are no longer inexpensive, the tradition still continues in restaurants, bars, and even at home.

Along with the actual wings we supply to restaurants and retail, let’s not forget that our industry also creates a supply need for sauces and rubs. I am probably not in the majority, but I like my wings fried and plain, with an occasional rub added to my wings. According to the NCC report, most Americans like their wings with ranch dressing, followed by BBQ sauce, hot sauce and blue cheese. There are lots of choices, when it comes to wings.

The Super Bowl and Thanksgiving are really the two times in the year that I take advantage of sharing the fact that I am a poultry scientist. The light bulb tends to go off with people and they realize that wings come from chickens, chickens are poultry, and therefore I must be a really cool person. It just so happens that Super Bowl Sunday is the second most popular day for food take out — and yep, you guessed it; wings are in the top 3 of that list as well. Super Bowl Sunday is also the second largest food consumption day in the USA, behind Thanksgiving, according to the USDA. Our industry makes the center of the plate on the two largest food consumption days of the year. Go team!

Whatever you ate and whomever you were cheering for, I hope it was an amazing Super Bowl Sunday for all.

Better together: wings and football

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