What the Dream Matchup Means for MLB
It’s just past 1 a.m. on a Monday, and 33-year-old Franny is getting ready to watch a Chiefs game from her home in Lisbon. She’s messaging with more than a dozen other fans in a group chat, about half of whom are also scattered throughout Europe.
“I usually plan my sleep schedule around Chiefs games during football season,” she tells Front Office Sports.
Until last season, Franny didn’t pay much attention to NFL football, other than when family or friends had it on TV. But Franny and her international crew are massive Taylor Swift fans—“Swifties”—who have grown quite fond of the singer’s boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
“I’m fully committed. It’s insane, because this time last year, I didn’t even know the difference between a linebacker and a running back. Like, I had no idea. And now I know names of not just the Chiefs players, but other teams,” says Franny, who spent a good chunk of her life studying in the U.S. “I grew up around it. I just never took it seriously or had any interest of it up until this point, which I feel like is probably common for a lot of girls as well.”
Franny listened to Kelce’s podcast with his brother Jason, New Heights, watched First Things First with Nick Wright, and tuned in to Kansas City games through an online stream not affiliated with the NFL. She watched other teams during the playoffs and binged Netflix’s Quarterback. “I came for Travis, but I stayed for Patrick Mahomes,” she says of her new obsession. She also has a “soft spot” for Packers quarterback Jordan Love and “just can’t stand” Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni.
Franny is one of many Swifties who have become “Chiefties.” But there’s more to it. They’re playing fantasy football, watching college matchups, and buying tickets for non–Kansas City games. Although originally looking to further their Swiftie devotion, these fans have—perhaps against the odds—latched onto the game of football itself.
“I definitely would say I was a casual NFL watcher. But now I’m in a dorm and I brought a TV just to watch the Chiefs games,” 18-year-old Jenna from Pennsylvania tells FOS. “Sometimes I have to sit down and admit, like, holy crap, this is my whole life.”
The superstar has had a rabid fan base and plenty of famous boyfriends in the past, but her fans are rallying around Kelce with a different fervor, even if they aren’t football experts. There’s a reason why.
“I saw the happiest I think I’ve ever seen Taylor in the, gosh, 17 or 18 years I’ve been a fan of her,” 29-year-old Morgan Barrett, who lives in Florida, tells FOS.
The fans fell for Kelce, too. Outside of how Kelce publicly discusses and supports Swift, Barrett cites the player’s charity work, his relationship with his family, and his work ethic as further reasons for why he “seems like such an amazing person.”
Now, many people like Jenna are watching the games for more than Swift’s tunnel outfits. “Any game she’s not there, I’m still watching, I’m still supporting our man. I like to think of it as two different entities in a way, of like, I love and support Taylor, and now that I’ve seen how happy Travis has made her, I’m like, yes, I’m rooting for him,” she says.
Swift’s fans turned directly to the Kelce brothers to bring them up to speed on football: The “No Dumb Questions” segments of their podcast often includes social media posts from Swifties. One recently said they would appreciate bonus football explainers from the brothers, because they would “love to be able to understand the NFL portions of the podcast, but a lot of it is hard to grasp as someone with no background.” (Not all Swifties are as lucky as Jenna, who leans on a friend she calls “the football whisperer.”)
Swifties have embraced the elder Kelce, who retired from the Eagles after last season and recently made his debut on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown. “I know Jason isn’t playing anymore, but I have to keep up with him and see how his sportscasting goes,” Barrett says. She also wants to keep supporting last year’s Chiefs who went to new teams. Originally from Ohio, her new fandom has gotten her more invested in the Buckeyes, too.
“I want to know more. I want to not just be this basic person watching football,” Barrett says. At a February Super Bowl party, she was glued to the TV and screamed louder than anyone. When the Chiefs won, “my heart about fell out of my butt,” the longtime Bengals fan says. “I was like, ‘How did I get here?’”
All four Swifties interviewed for this story said they would remain invested in football even if Swift stopped going to games or Kelce got injured or retired. It bucks common trends, says Andrew Billings, who runs the sports communication program at the University of Alabama.
“You see crossover for things in other genres of entertainment. … It’s pretty rare to have this combination of where music fans are then moving to the sports realm,” Billings, who researches sports consumption and social media, tells FOS. “Usually, if anything, it’s the opposite.”
The NFL is riding the wave. The league’s fan base is already heavily female: 2021 stats showed women comprised about 46% of fans, two years before the couple linked up. But it wasn’t until 2023 that the league and NFL-adjacent companies started recognizing them as a core demographic. After Swift’s first appearance, the league quickly changed its social media bios to “NFL (Taylor’s Version)” and “9/24/23. Taylor was here.” Every game she attended, the broadcasts panned several times to show the singer and her friends.
Embracing Swift’s presence immediately reflected in viewership distribution. The second game Swift attended saw a 53% spike in viewership with teenage girls compared to the first three weeks of Sunday Night Football. The figures reflected a 24% jump in women viewers ages 18 to 24, and a 34% increase for women ages 35 and older. In total, upward of two million more women tuned in than in previous weeks, NBC reported. And at the end of the regular season, the league measured its highest female viewership since it began tracking the metric in 2000, up 9% from the year before.
Fast-forward to the Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl, where women’s viewership also increased 9% from the previous year. Critically, viewership from the year before grew 11% among teenage girls and 24% among 18- to 24-year-old women.
Some health and beauty brands saw this coming, including Dove, e.l.f. Cosmetics, and L’Oréal’s NYX Professional Makeup, all of which bought Super Bowl ads for the first time in almost two decades (or ever). It’s hard to definitively say a growing and increasingly passionate fan base of young women will change NFL advertising trends, but the hunger from female-focused brands is already there, and the opportunity could be extremely lucrative.
Swift has a massive international fan base, one that the NFL should be salivating to bring into its orbit.
Of the 50 cities Swift has and is scheduled to play on her blockbuster Eras Tour, more than half (27) of them are outside the U.S. The singer sold out stadiums on five continents.
Commissioner Roger Goodell has lofty dreams of turning American football into a global game, recently saying he feels “confident” the league can eventually restructure the season to fit 16 international games into the calendar. The league currently plays five a year, which this season included the first game in Brazil. Since the NFL allowed teams to begin marketing overseas in 2022, all but seven teams have started running global fan events, touching down in 19 different countries (the Chiefs spent $1 million in Frankfurt and $3 million overall as of last fall).
Some international Swifties are already helping to prove the league’s global ambitions may not be misguided. Jenna says she’s made new football friends in Canada and the U.K. because of the power couple. Franny, the fan in Portugal, has an online friend who lives in the Netherlands and didn’t follow football before Swift and Kelce’s relationship. The friend is now so enamored with football that she’s going to the Bears-Jaguars game in London in October, which neither the singer nor her beau will attend.
The international online community is important for keeping up Franny’s fandom, because most of her friends in Portugal aren’t as invested as she is.
“There’s [a bunch] of us that are in the same time zone, if not, some people are even in later time zones than me. And we’re just staying up to watch the same football game,” Franny says. “So it’s fun because it’s like, I know I’m not crazy.
“I’m not the only one who’s crazy, anyway.”
