chicken wings with carrots and celery on a plate

NCC: Super Bowl Watchers Expected to Eat 1.45 Billion Wings — About the Same as Last Year

Feb. 5, 2024

The National Chicken Council expects the number of wings consumed during the NFL’s annual championship game this year to be flat compared to last year’s game.

Andy Hanacek

The National Chicken Council has released its 2024 Wing Report in advance of Sunday’s Super Bowl LVIII — an annual tradition that continues to show the popularity of the poultry products during the NFL’s big game every year.

According to the report, Americans will eat 1.45 billion wings during the game this year, Feb. 11. That’s enough for every adult AND child in the U.S. to eat four wings apiece — whether they care about football or not.

The NCC reports that this year’s projection is flat compared to the 2023 projection, with USDA reporting chicken production levels slightly lower and cold-storage wing stocks down 13% in November compared to a year prior. At least consumers won’t be squeezed as much at retail checkouts by fresh and frozen wings prices, according to Circana — retail prices for fresh wings are down roughly 5%, while frozen are down 11% compared to 2023.

More interesting statistics around those 1.45 billion wings to digest: If one person ordered (and, assumedly, ate) 50 wings at a restaurant every day — it would take 79,452 YEARS to rack up enough orders to total 1.45 billion wings. Then, if you tried to count those 1.45 billion wings, counting exactly one piece per second, it would take you 46 years to count them all.

All that said, there’s room for high achievers to, um, spread their wings and fly a bit.

In the department of “We Can Do Better” (or, I suppose, “We Choose to Go to the Moon!”), if you strung 1.45 billion chicken wings end-to-end in an attempt to reach the Moon, you’d only get about a third of the way there.

So, chicken wing eaters, unite: You now have a cosmic goal!

About the Author

Andy Hanacek | Senior Editor

Andy Hanacek has covered meat, poultry, bakery and snack foods as a B2B editor for nearly 20 years, and has toured hundreds of processing plants and food companies, sharing stories of innovation and technological advancement throughout the food supply chain. In 2018, he won a Folio:Eddie Award for his unique "From the Editor's Desk" video blogs, and he has brought home additional awards from Folio and ASBPE over the years. In addition, Hanacek led the Meat Industry Hall of Fame for several years and was vice president of communications for We R Food Safety, a food safety software and consulting company.