Taylor Swift has made headlines this year for more than her tour and music prowess. The pop star has only grown in popularity from her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs Tight End Travis Kelce. The power couple has owned the media since they started dating in September of 2023. Taylor Swift’s mere involvement with the NFL has made the network millions of dollars and here’s how.
Taylor has become the unofficial face of the Chiefs since she started dating Kelce and her fans cannot get enough of the glowing pop star on their TV screens. So much so, in fact, that she has singlehandedly increased interest from her fanbase to watch football games.
Without doing much of anything other than supporting her boyfriend from the stands, Swift has generated more than $300M dollars for the NFL. The network was happy to capitalize on the newfound interest in sports from her fanbase and took every opportunity to remind the Swifties that Taylor supported the Chiefs and so they should too. They posted about her and even made pictures of her cheering on the Chiefs the banner on the official NFL X account.
Some football fans took issue with the focus being on the singer instead of the games. Despite complaints from football fans, Swift was only shown during Chiefs games for an average of 20-40 seconds of the 3 hour long program. Some Swift fans claimed that the upset at her being featured for a few seconds was blown way out of proportion.
So, how does one actually calculate how much Swift has made the NFL? Apex marketing group took it upon themselves to calculate just how much brand value Taylor brought the league as a whole as well as the Kansas City Chiefs franchise. Before the Super Bowl win they estimated that she brought in a whopping $331.5M!
They estimated this value by adding together any mention of her in media, from T.V. and radio to social media. They gave each of these mentions a dollar value to estimate the total impact she has had on the NFL financially.
In addition to bringing in more viewers, there was a 400% increase in Travis Kelce jersey sales after news broke that the couple were together and Taylor Swift attended her first game. Not to mention, the NFL saw it’s female viewership at the highest it has been since 2000. While this can’t be directly connected to Swift, the correlation seems obvious.
Swift’s fans confirmed theories of her influence on the viewership stating that they were far more likely to tune into games and to purchase merch following her relationship with Kelce. Her influence truly cannot be overstated!
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell spoke to the positive impact of what has come to be known as the “Swift Effect”. He stated, “Having the ‘Taylor Swift Effect’ is also a positive. It creates buzz, it creates another group of young fans, particularly young women- that are interested in seeing: why is she going to the game?”
It comes as no surprise that the NFL commissioner would be a fan! While some fans were perturbed by the amount of attention paid to Taylor Swift instead of the actual game, most of the audience reveled in the media attention, asserting that more people watching the games is better for everyone. Now that the football season has come to an end, fans wonder if the power couple’s seemingly magic romance will continue to fuel the Chiefs next season.
