The pop singer’s rumored relationship with the star tight end has boosted ticket sales and merchandise purchases as attention turns to a game this weekend at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Mikala McCauley never thought she’d ask her husband if she could tag along to an NFL game. All it took was Taylor Swift.
With reports emerging that Swift will make an encore NFL appearance at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey Sunday night, as the Jets take on the Kansas City Chiefs, many of her fans — who have been getting a crash course on football in recent days — are snatching up tickets to the game, hoping they might catch a glimpse of their favorite singer.
Swift, rumored to be dating star tight end Travis Kelce, was in Kansas City last Sunday watching from a luxury suite with Kelce’s mom Donna as the Chiefs walloped the Bears, sending her fans into a tizzy and setting off an explosion of jersey sales, memes and news coverage as two of America’s most potent cultural forces — the NFL and Swift — collided.
Now, the defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs are coming to New York as the Jets stare into the void of a season without prized free-agent acquisition Aaron Rodgers. But in a surprising and impressive testament to Swift’s popularity, there’s newfound buzz around the match-up. McCauley, 28, who works in education technology, said her husband bought the tickets hoping to see two of the best quarterbacks in the NFL go head-to-head, but wanted to sell them after Rodgers was injured.
Instead, at McCauley’s urging, it’s turned into a date night. She bought a $67 Kelce jersey for the occasion and has been scouring the internet for the red Chiefs jacket Swift wore last Sunday.
“It’s so funny how the roles have reversed,” she said.
National Attention
It all started when Swift, whose concert tour is on hiatus until she heads overseas in November, turned up in Kansas City to watch Kelce and was shown multiple times during the national broadcast of the game. In the 24-hour period after she was spotted, sales of tickets to the Jets game Sunday doubled on StubHub, according to the company. Web traffic from people searching for the game on VividSeats, another ticket website, shot up 173%, a company representative said. Tickets for future Chiefs home games are also seeing an increase in demand.
Sales of Kelce’s jersey have spiked too, as the player — who was already one of the NFL’s most recognizable — is introduced to a massive new cohort of fans.
“We have celebrities at our games every single weekend and we’ve never seen anything like this,” said Ian Trombetta, a senior vice president of social, influencer and content marketing at the NFL.
The willingness of Swift’s fans to spend thousands on concert tickets, travel and hotels to see her perform this summer made it on the radar of officials at the Federal Reserve, who are trying to ascertain the status of the American consumer. There seemed to be no end to how much Swifties, as Taylor’s loyal fans are known, would splurge to see the shows. And with no American tour dates scheduled until 2024, some of that energy and cash is being directed to the NFL, with the league and its marketers more than willing to play along.
The league’s Twitter account changed its description to “NFL (Taylor’s Version),” a play on the designation she adds to her re-recorded songs. And after fan account @tswiftearstour posted a photo of Swift at the stadium with the caption “Taylor Swift was eating a piece of chicken with ketchup and seemingly ranch,” the Twitter account for Hidden Valley Ranch changed its name to “Seemingly Ranch.”
Public Sighting
Swift and Kelce have not confirmed that they’re a couple, and last Sunday after the game was the first time they were spotted together in public. But even before reports that she was going to attend the Jets game, fans were buying tickets on a hunch that it might happen. After all, Swift has a place in Tribeca.
With the Jets on the brink of implosion, some of their fans are likely dumping tickets rather than fight the traffic for a game that will stretch toward midnight. Tickets in the upper deck were available for around $100, a far cry from when Swift played at the stadium in May and it was hard to find anything for less than $1,000.
The Swift-Kelce news cycle has created interesting dynamics. NFL diehards are bemused that Swift’s fans have never heard of Kelce, while Swifties are getting up to speed on the sometimes inscrutable rules of professional football.
In a video posted by Chris Olsen on TikTok, he runs through “A Swiftie guide to football,” a PowerPoint presentation where he covers everything from where football fans usually gather to watch games to how many teams there are in the NFL to how players score touchdowns.
In another viral TikTok trend, women tell their male partners that Swift has put Kelce on the map and record their incredulous reactions.
Of course, there are plenty of Swift fans who already liked the NFL, which posts massive television ratings each week and is by far the most popular professional sports league in the US. Elizabeth Gunaydin, a 31 year old from Long Island who works in finance, already had tickets to the game. And she’s not particularly excited for the influx of Swifties. She’s a fan of both Swift and the Jets — but isn’t sure the newfound attention from the pop star’s fans is a good thing.
“It’s going to be the Taylor Swift bowl,” she said. “The Swifties are taking over the world.”
Erin Kelly, who has been a Swift fan since 2010 and saw her perform twice this summer at MetLife Stadium, said she considered getting tickets to Sunday’s game. The 26 year old is a huge football fan. But she roots for the New York Giants, so she decided against spending $120 to sit in the upper deck.
“I paid way more than that for Taylor, but for Taylor I was like on the floor,” Kelly said. “I don’t necessarily want to go see the Jets lose by like 50 points.”
© Bloomberg