Super Bowl XLIX by the numbers

In a busy corner of downtown Phoenix, the Super Bowl's iconic Roman numerals tower 30 feet into the air.

Those numerals, XLIX, mark American professional football's 49th championship match - but the numbers quantifying the big game's financial impact are far more staggering.

Arizona's host committee estimates this year's Super Bowl will have an economic impact of $500 million (443 million euros) and attract around 100,000 out-of-staters to the greater Phoenix area, including nearby Glendale, where the game will be held.

Those returns are important for Glendale, which has invested heavily in sporting complexes over the years and needs its investments to pay off.

There are 72,000 seats in the University of Phoenix stadium, with the Seattle Seahawks facing off against the New England Patriots. On TV, the Super Bowl is the single most-watched program in the US. Last year, around 111.5 million viewers tuned in, according to Nielsen market researchers.

By comparison, 26.5 million people in the US watched Germany's victory over Argentina in the 2014 World Cup, a game that set a record as the most-watched soccer match in US history.

"The Super Bowl is one of those things that everyone still does whether they're sports fans or not," said Victor Matheson, a sports economist from the College of the Holy Cross who has researched the financial impact of major sporting events.

That kind of attention is why the game's official broadcaster, NBC, can charge advertisers $4.5 million for a 30-second commercial.

Broadcasters also have a unique opportunity to reach consumers during the Super Bowl because sports are one of the few things people watch on live television, Matheson said.

"It's one of those last places where TV advertisers have a captive audience," he said.

Football fans across the country are expected to dish out $14.3 billion on merchandise, apparel and food. On game day, Americans will drink 325.5 million gallons of beer and gobble up around 1.2 billion chicken wings, or more than 100 million pounds of chicken meat.

Auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was more modest with its estimates of Super Bowl XLIX's economic impact, saying the game would bring $206 million in direct spending to the greater Phoenix area.

That included money for expenses such as lodging, transportation, food and entertainment, but excluded what PwC categorized as "indirect" impacts, such as a concession company stocking up on goods from local vendors.

"This year's projection is the second highest on record," said Adam Jones, an economist at PwC who was quoted in the firm's report. "However, the inflation-adjusted result is approximately 2 percent lower than our estimate for Arizona's last Super Bowl in 2008."

That was before the recession hit, when consumers were more frivolous with their spending.

PwC also noted that game pitted a New York market team, the Giants, against the New England Patriots, who were gunning for a perfect season. It was simply a more high-profile match.

Matheson has also crunched the numbers and figures a Super Bowl can generate between $30 million and $130 million for a host community. Arizona's estimates, he said, were likely overblown because they failed to take into account what he called "multiplier and crowding out effects."

For one, people in the area that buy something Super Bowl-related would have spent that money somewhere else locally. That doesn't generate new economic activity, it just shifts money around.

The second factor is the "crowding out effect" - basically football enthusiasts in town for the big game just displacing regular tourists who would have been there anyway.

But the game won't only be lucrative for companies. Players on the winning side will be rewarded with a bonus of $97,000 each. The losers will get about half that, or $49,000.