The nearly 1.5 billion chicken wings fans are expected to consume during Sunday’s Super Bowl watch parties will cost more this year, and it is more than just the demand driving the increase.
Jada Thompson, an associate professor in the agricultural economics and agribusiness department for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said the national composite chicken price is up 5% year-over-year for December, but for whole wings it is up 19 percent.
“Likely, these are higher because of the holiday demand and strong market for these products,” Thompson said. “In terms of what is driving these prices, we can relate a lot to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza.”
The total number of chickens harvested in December was down 4% year-over-year, and while some of the dip was compensated by bigger birds, each chicken still only has two wings and two drumettes, she noted.
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Bird flu affected some broiler production with a loss of 5.6 million broiler chickens last year. It was the largest number of affected broilers in a given year since the outbreak started in 2022, she said. An additional 1.6 million broilers were lost this year by the end of January.
Bird flu is also affecting the breeding side of the industry, with a 4 percent drop in broilers coming into the system, she said. There have been at least 65,000 breeder birds lost to bird flu this year and 127,000 were lost in the final three months of 2024.
“Broiler eggs in incubators are up, so the industry is trying to compensate for lower supplies,” Thompson said. “Work continues to improve biosecurity, develop vaccines and other control plans.”
WING DEMAND UP
According to the National Chicken Council’s annual Chicken Wing Report, Americans are projected to eat 1.47 billion chicken wings watching the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday. That’s about 20 million more wings than last year’s game.
The increase in chicken wing sales is directly tied to American football and beer sales, the council adds.
“Cooking the whole bird was trendy in the 1960s and 1970s, but in the 1980s, U.S. consumers started preferring boneless-skinless breast meat, and wings became an inexpensive byproduct for chicken producers,” a National Chicken Council news release explained. “Restaurants and bars realized they could charge low prices for the relatively inexpensive protein, and due to the spicy/salty nature of the sauce, they discovered that beer sales would go through the roof when customers ate wings.”
Thompson conducts research for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the Division of Agriculture’s research arm. She also teaches classes for the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.
In addition to her work analyzing poultry meat prices, Thompson also recently collaborated on a study exploring the effects of HPAI on U.S. egg prices. The work, published last year in the journal Food Policy, was titled “Biological lags and market dynamics in vertically coordinated food supply chains: HPAI impacts on U.S. egg prices.”
Her collaborators included corresponding author James Mitchell, assistant professor and extension economist in the agricultural economics and agribusiness department, and Trey Malone with the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University.
To learn more about the Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website or uaex.uada.edu.
John Lovett is with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.