NEW YORK—The Super Bowl, already a spectacle of American football, music and advertising, kicks off Sunday with yet one more attention-grabbing lure: megastar Taylor Swift cheering from the VIP suites.
The 34-year-old pop culture icon has been very publicly dating tight end Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, who will face off against the San Francisco 49ers in a bid to take the Lombardi Trophy back home.
It’s all but assured that legions of fans who don’t care a lick about the outcome will be tuning into the game on the basis of Swift’s mere presence.
There’s also speculation over the ability of Swift — who just made Grammys history by scooping her fourth Album of the Year prize — to make it to Las Vegas for Sunday’s game after she plays a string of dates in Tokyo on her blockbuster Eras Tour.
Normally anticipation builds for the artists booked to play the field at halftime; recent performers include Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira. Last year, Rihanna’s set dominated the conversation after she revealed a second child was on the way.
This year, Usher is slated to take one of the most watched stages in music, but the pop and R&B singer behind chart toppers including “U Got It Bad” and “Yeah!” has been somewhat sidelined, with Swift’s name on everyone’s lips.
“If I were performing in that halftime show, I would be thinking, ‘Why did they have to book me during the Taylor Swift Super Bowl?’ said pop culture and media professor Robert Thompson of Syracuse University.
Kansas City Chiefs games—where Swift has been a regular in a private box—have smashed a series of ratings records this past season.
Most recently, the Chiefs playoff game against the Buffalo Bills last month was the most-watched Divisional Round game in NFL history, and the first to surpass more than 50 million viewers.
The Chiefs game against the Baltimore Ravens similarly was the most watched AFC conference championship ever.
The Super Bowl is already television’s crown jewel: last year, the event drew 113 million US viewers—or roughly a third of the country.
And the Taylor Swift effect could boost those already mammoth ratings even higher.
Miss Americana
The National Football League is all for it, capitalizing on the phenomenon beginning with Swift’s first appearance at a Kansas City game in September, alongside Kelce’s mother.
In November ahead of the traditional Thanksgiving games, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called Swift “an unbelievable artist” and said “it’s great for the league to have that kind of attention.”
“We welcome it… It has connected more fans of Taylor’s and more fans of the NFL in some ways.”
It’s too early to quantify the impact that Swift has had on American football’s already big business, said Joe Favorito, a Columbia University professor who consults on sports marketing.
“A lot of it is anecdotal,” he told AFP. “The easy way to measure it is in social media impact—those numbers are clear.”
“And I think when you look at the earned media that has come from her involvement around the Kansas City Chiefs, it’s in the millions.”
Favorito also pointed to new angles on sports betting as well as merchandise sales, and growing brand recognition of the Chiefs.
Swift’s connection has “become a door opener for awareness for the team and probably for the league outside of the US much more than it is inside the US,” he added.
Ashley Brantman, a co-head at Jack 39, a sports and entertainment arm of the Jack Morton consulting agency, noted that more women seem to be engaging with the NFL, which she called “a really positive shift.”
“I happen to have been an NFL fan far before Travis and Taylor,” Brantman said. “However, people are gaining interest because it’s something that is a shared passion point outside of football, right? It’s cultural.”
Everyone’s ‘an expert’
Swift’s blossoming relationship with Kelce, and the league, has not come without some controversy and grumbling over the airtime she gets during games, an annoyance to some diehard fans.
Thompson said the backlash is just part of the game.
Pop culture delivers a lot in the form of entertainment, but it’s also “something that we can complain about, something that we can weigh in about,” he told AFP.
“Everybody feels comfortable weighing in about these issues because everybody feels like they’re an expert.”
Which begs the question: Why do we care?
“In American culture, pop stars and football players, it doesn’t get much higher on the pyramid than that,” Thompson said.
“Why are people so obsessed with this?” he continued. “This is America.”
“How many seasons of ‘The Kardashians’ have we watched?”
