Taylor Swift, 34, is most known for her music and incredible ability to perform and put on a show. Lately, Swift’s popularity has been at an all time high due to the infamous Eras Tour that has brought in a staggering $1 billion across 60 tour dates with over 4 million tickets sold in just those dates alone. The legendary Eras Tour is accredited with being the No. 1 tour worldwide in 2023 and the first tour to cross the billion-dollar mark.
With all of the most recent success and boost in popularity, Swift has gathered a substantial amount of influence attributed to her most loyal and dedicated fans known as the Swifties. The Swifties have been known to have a considerable amount of power when it comes to supporting Taylor Swift, such as making one of her songs ‘Cruel Summer’ hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 four years after its original release. While the Swifties have proved to have an exponential amount of influence on Taylor’s music, their impact expands to more than just music.
Earlier this year the Kansas City Chiefs faced off against the New York Jets in a prime
time matchup for the ages. The historic NFL game that people know ‘All Too Well’ accumulated a total of 27 million viewers at its peak. While the majority of viewers were regular football fans tuning into ‘Sunday Night Football’ on NBC, there was an extensive amount of female viewership due to the highly anticipated appearance of 12 time Grammy Award Winner and pop superstar, Taylor Swift who was seen cheering on her then rumored boyfriend and tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, Travis Kelce. Even though Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s relationship was unexpected, their ‘Love Story’ was nothing short of enchanting.
When Travis Kelce made an appearance at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour earlier this summer, he took to his podcast, ‘New Heights,’ to talk about the experience with his brother, Jason Kelce, who is also an NFL player. Travis and Jason Kelce release a new episode of their podcast every Wednesday during the NFL season and on this particular Wednesday Travis was feeling a little sour that Taylor didn’t talk to him after her three hour long performance.
“I was disappointed that she doesn’t talk before or after her shows because she has to save her voice for the 44 songs that she sings,” Travis shared on the July 26 episode of his ‘New Heights’ podcast. “I was a little butt-hurt I didn’t get to hand her one of the bracelets I made for her.”
Fast forward five months later and Taylor Swift is named Time magazine person of the year, and brought up what made ‘Sparks Fly’ between her and Travis Kelce.
“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” Taylor said. “We started hanging out right after that.”
Travis Kelce invited Taylor Swift to see a game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City shortly after the comments he made on the ‘New Heights’ podcast. Taylor Swift took him up on his offer and exposed the status of their relationship when she was seen sitting next to Travis’s mom, Donna Kelce, in the Kelce friends and family suite above the stadium. Her appearance changed the structure of the NFL for months to come as it started to appeal a lot more to female viewers. It got to the point where NFL personnel started to reference Taylor Swift song titles throughout their broadcast.
During the Kansas City Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars game NFL announcer, Ian Eagle, referenced a Taylor Swift song saying, “Kelce finds a ‘blank space’ for the score!” An NFL Network commentator, Rich Eisen, mentioned multiple of Taylor’s song titles by saying, “You saw it on Thursday night, when Travis Kelce wasn’t in there, it left a ‘blank space,’ but I think he returns today and proves to be the ‘anti-hero.’” Eisen said, “Never goes out of ‘style.’”
With all the attention that Taylor Swift was receiving, she was shown a total of 17 times throughout the Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears broadcast on Sept. 24. Swift was captured laughing, smiling, and cheering from cameramen and fans during the game and Kelce was all for it.
“I just thought it was awesome how everybody in the suite had nothing but great things to say about her,” T. Kelce said during his ‘New Heights’ podcast. “She looked amazing and everybody was talking about her in great light and on top of that the day went perfect for Chiefs fans.”
Over the past few months Swift and Kelce’s relationship has reached new heights since Swift has been more public compared to her relationships in the past. It’s a love story for the ages that will hopefully never go out of style.
“When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” Swift said during her interview with Time magazine.
