We may not all necessarily follow American football, but it would have been nearly impossible to avoid all the Super Bowl news over the weekend. The Kansas City Chiefs won, if you’re wondering. Over the Philadelphia Eagles. But that was, quite frankly, secondary news. Rihanna’s second pregnancy, announced in characteristic style, was honestly what set the internet ablaze. Rihanna, who performed the halftime show, revealed her pregnancy while also doing an extraordinary over-a-dozen song playlist while being suspended on a platform 60 feet above the ground for most of the show. Talk about being the coolest pop star of her generation.
Vir Das, who has steadily been gaining a wider audience in the West, posted a hilarious picture on Instagram to commemorate the Super Bowl. Posting a picture of a biriyani, Vir Das quipped that that Super Bowl was way better than any Super Bowl. We really could not agree more. After all, this Super Bowl is not even really football. But let’s not wade into tricky territory.
Vir was not too far off with his chicken biriyani picture. Chicken—chicken wings to be specific—have a strong connection with the Super Bowl. Over the weekend, Americans are expected to have eaten 1.45 billion chicken wings, according to the National Chicken Council. No, that was not a typo. It was a B! So, how did this come to be? How did chicken wings come to be the unofficial Super Bowl food?
On January 15, 1967, the Green Bay Packers and the same Kansas City Chiefs faced off in the inaugural Super Bowl. Little did the estimated 51 million spectators watching the game on TV know that it would have an immense effect on the amount of chicken eaten in America. The Packers won the game 35-10, but chicken, specifically its wings, came out on top.
In 1967, the amount of chicken Americans ate per person was 32.6 pounds, usually purchased as a whole bird. Pieces of chicken were an uncommon sight at the grocery store, and there was scant interest in chicken wings. Then, in 1964, the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY, had the idea of transforming the usual soup ingredient into a piquant nibble for a hungry crowd. This bar in Buffalo is what gave the name to Buffalo Wings. If you have ever wondered whether there were any buffalo in these wings, you now have your answer. It’s chicken wings from a place called Buffalo in the state of New York!
A few years after they first became available, chicken wings became an increasingly popular item in bars. But it was the first Super Bowl event that made them a must-have staple of sporting events, with football and basketball tournaments and the regular season of college and professional football all driving up the demand for wings. In fact, any major sporting event that draws a crowd is likely to cause a spike in chicken wing consumption. Back in 1967, the cost of chicken wings on the New York market was 23 cents per pound. Today, Americans eat an estimated 90.1 pounds of chicken wings per capita, which is a 176 percent increase from 1967. The current wholesale price for wings is 197 cents per pound, an increase of 743 percent. At these prices, the wings make up almost a quarter of the cost of the entire bird!
In the year 2015, the US poultry business created around 28.5 billion divided pieces of chicken wings—the drumette and flat parts of the wing, which exclude the tip portion—which were regularly exported. At least 5.6 percent of those chicken wing portions were publicized during the week prior to the major event. That's 1.6 billion chicken wing portions that went through the hands of excited football fanatics across the country! It is anticipated that a similar amount will be moved for this year's major game. With a projected audience of almost 115 million, that's a whopping 14 wings per viewer!