While chicken wings are now bigger, it's also more expensive - sports fan who will watch the Super Bowl on Sunday will find out.

The soaring price of the wings is because of lesser supply by about 50 million pairs. Leaderpost reports that wholesale prices by Georgia processors, which is the standard in the U.S., has increased to 8.2 percent in January to $1.715 per pound. It is the biggest hike on the first month since 2012.

Like Us on Facebook

Despite the lower supply, chicken growers are expected to produce 39.21 billion pounds in 2015, up 2.7 percent from 2014 levels.

As some sort of compensation, the costlier wings would be bigger because of the extra feed given the fowl as prices of corn and soybean used as feeds, in turn, went down.

Notwithstanding the favorite sports fan menu's price soaring, sports fans will eat 1.25 billion wings on February 1, the same volume consumed in 2014, according to estimates by the National Chicken Council.

The Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant chain, which has over 1,000 outlets, hiked its prices by 3 percent in November earlier than the traditional February increase because of the higher price of chicken wings, discloses CEO Jim Schmidt.

Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic, a research company in Chicago, explained the popularity of chicken wings to its being customizable. And being chicken meat, it is healthier compared to pork or beef. Other plus points for wings are the various flavors available and easy to eat because it is finger food.

However, Buffalo's Care CEO Andy Widerhorn said that in spite of higher chicken wings prices, Super Bowl fans will pay more had their favorite game food been hamburger whose prices soared even by a larger percentage compared to fowl's wings.

Tagschicken wings, super bowl