Pop Star Taylor Swift Boosts NFL Female Fan Engagement
During the first half of Sunday’s Super Bowl, the big screen at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas briefly switched from the game on the field to showing Taylor Swift quaffing a beer in her luxury box. Of course, Swift was on hand to cheer on her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and his Kansas City Chiefs, who won back-to-back games in a thrilling overtime game.
But the biggest winner of the night was the NFL, by all accounts America’s greatest unified live entertainment juggernaut. When Swift started attending games in person this year, the league got a huge gift: ticket sales for some Kansas City Chiefs games nearly quadrupled, and NFL viewership for the entire 2023 season increased by 7%.
Swift’s millions of young female fans are a huge benefit to the NFL: About 58% of Americans who watch football games each week are male, and four out of Three are over 50 years old. While rumors of a conspiracy persist, NFL leaders admit the TV traffic Taylor brings is just a coincidence. Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, told reporters last week that the NFL wasn’t smart enough to engineer a Swift-Kelce romance even if they tried.
“I don’t think I’m a very good writer, or anyone on our team,” he said. “Taylor is obviously a dynamic person. Everything she touches has people following her, so we feel very lucky and we welcome that.”
The NFL, as the most powerful sports league in the world‘s richest country, should not be relying on a pop star’s social life to build deeper relationships with female fans. Sports fans arriving in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl last week shared their thoughts about female spectators, and they unanimously said they love human stories in sports.
“The key is teamwork,” said Lori Haddock, a San Francisco 49ers fan from Omaha. “Rugby is something that the whole family does…especially if you have something to watch together, it’s so competitive and fun.”
Like Swift, Haddock was introduced to football through relationships in her life. Kiah Cresser, 27, and Ben Mathiou, 28, traveled from Australia’s Gold Coast to Las Vegas for their first Super Bowl. Kresser told me she wasn’t a huge sports fan until the Swift-Kelce relationship started to develop. “It’s a love story, how could you resist it?” she said.
To be sure, the league is working hard to drum up interest among female fans; last year, with some persuasion from the NFL, flag football, a version of flag football that does not allow physical contact that is open to all genders, was introduced ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Such a strategy may be successful in the long run, but for now, football relies on the image of Swift enjoying herself in her box, high-fiving her family, and cheering with her girlfriends. The message was a quiet revelation for some women: This is also a space for entertainment.