Super Bowl LIX Is Almost Here! Here's Why the NFL Always Uses Roman Numerals

Who's ready for the big game? Super Bowl LIX will take place on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, La. A rematch of Super Bowl LVII, the game will be played between the two-time defending Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.

Also stepping foot into the stadium that night will be Kendrick Lamar, who will perform during the halftime show. As we near the big game, you probably have a lot of questions going through your mind.

While we can't predict the winner or tell you how much money you should bet on the game, we can answer some simple inquiries about the game. For starters, why does the Super Bowl exclusively use Roman numerals to name each year's game? Also, how exactly does one decipher these numerals?!

To make sure we’re all on the same page, LIX stands for 59, as in the 59th Super Bowl will take place in 2025 between the Chiefs and the Eagles.

But if you're sitting here wondering why the Super Bowl wasn't just named Super Bowl 59 or Super Bowl 2025, you're not alone. That's a great question.

According to the NFL, "The Roman numerals were adopted to clarify any confusion that may occur because the NFL Championship Game — the Super Bowl — is played in the year following a chronologically recorded season. Numerals I through IV were added later for the first four Super Bowls."

OK, cool, but what does all that mean exactly?

Let's break it down: Each Super Bowl game takes place at the beginning of a new calendar year (typically in January, but sometimes February). But get this — the big game is actually being counted for the season prior.

For example, when the Kansas City Chiefs won the last Super Bowl again last year in 2024, they actually won the culminating game of the 2023 football season.

Therefore, it would get incredibly confusing if the NFL decided to name each game by the season in which it was played.

Additionally, the late Lamar Hunt — who founded the Kansas City Chiefs and came up with the name "Super Bowl" — opted for using Roman numerals because they add "pomp and gravitas to the public mind." Plus, Roman numerals are internationally recognized, which makes it easier for people from all over the world to understand the event!

Understanding how to read Roman numerals is easier said than done. To get started, let's take a look at Super Bowl LIV which took place in 2020. It was the 54th Super Bowl.

As we mentioned before, this year's game, Super Bowl LIX, is the 59th Super Bowl game. When it comes to the numerals, LIV and LIX are pretty similar except there an X symbol replaces the V symbol. So how exactly do you read these and distinguish the difference? Learning the values of the Roman numerals is the first place to start:

I represents 1.

V represents 5.

X represents 10.

L represents 50.

C represents 100.

D represents 500.

M represents 1,000.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, each number is deciphered from left to right, although you may be required to do a little math.

When a symbol follows a larger or equal symbol, the two numerals are added together. But if a smaller symbol appears before a larger symbol, the smaller numeral is subtracted from the larger one.

So, Super Bowl LIX = 50 + [ 10 - 1 ] = Super Bowl 59

Every Super Bowl game has followed the rules of Roman numerals except for the 50th game in 2014. It was simply called Super Bowl 50.

As the league's vice president of brand and creative Jaime Weston told ESPN at the time, the "L" (aka the Roman numeral for 50) just wasn't very pleasing to the eye.

"When we developed the Super Bowl XL logo, that was the first time we looked at the letter L," Jaime said at the time. "Up until that point, we had only worked with X's, V's, and I's. And, at that moment, that's when we started to wonder: What will happen when we get to 50?"

The following year, the league returned to Roman numerals.