Millions of people will gather in bars and living rooms Sunday to watch the Seattle Seahawks battle the New England Patriots for NFL supremacy. While many viewers actually have a vested interest in the game, a segment of the population will only care about one thing: eating the party snacks.

If the menu includes chicken wings, however, it may leave a slightly larger hole in the pocketbook compared to past Super Bowl gatherings.Bloomberg reported last week that, according to government data, fewer chickens slaughtered means around 50 million fewer wings are available.Do the math and a wing price increase at local restaurants and grocery stores should come as no surprise.Processors in Georgia set the average price of wholesale chicken wings on a national level, and that cost has risen 8 percent to $1.715 a pound.That is up from $1.35 per pound at the same time last year, according to the Daily Northeast Broiler/Fryer Report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agriculture Marketing Service."Yes, we certainly have seen price increases in meat and poultry, but we work closely with our vendors to offer aggressive bonus buys in order to hold our wing prices steady," said Chris Brand, representative for Giant Food Stores.At the Giant's Lehighton store, wing prices are $2.29 per pound for a value pack and $3.39 per pound for a smaller pack this week.Jim Thorpe Market has wings available at $2.89 per pound for a value pack and $2.99 per pound for a regular pack."Those prices haven't gone up or down," said employee Melissa Storms. "They have been steady for around a year now."Consistency is the same story coming out of Thomson's Meat Market in Walnutport, where wings are $3.09 a pound and have been for a long time, according to store management.While the national average is currently on the rise, it's down significantly from when wing prices hit a record high of $2.11 per pound in January 2013.Chicken isn't alone, however. According to the USDA, Americans paid 9.2 percent more for meat last year, the biggest jump of any food group.Super Bowl Sunday is the second biggest eating day of the year, lagging behind only Thanksgiving.According to the National Chicken Council's released Jan. 22, 1.25 billion wings will be eaten Sunday. That matches the record tied last year when the Seahawks defeated the Denver Broncos.If 1.25 billion wing segments were laid end to end, they would stretch back and forth from CenturyLink Field in Seattle to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, almost 28 times. With the Super Bowl being played in Arizona, 1.25 billion wings would circle the Grand Canyon 120 times. That is enough wings to put 572 wings on every seat in all 32 NFL stadiums, according to the council.According to a survey on behalf of the National Chicken Council, of those who eat chicken wings, 46 percent prefer the drumette, 25 percent the flat and 10 percent prefer their wings whole.Nineteen percent say they don't have a preference, they like them all.