NEW YORK CITY - The U.S' most important sporting event is just around the corner. Last week, with the ACF and NFC conference championships, the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers crowned themselves as the two teams who will go head-to-head in the Super Bowl. However, amid the triumph and celebrations, a lavender haze emerged— Taylor Mania.
Although the NFL has been a major element of the American monoculture historically, the sport's popularity reached the stratosphere this season when singer-songwriter Taylor Swift started dating Chiefs' star tight-end Travis Kelce. Swift's attendance at the games has not only brought major hype to the sport and its matches, but also millions of dollars to the company.
"I think you see [Swift's impact] in the numbers. You see it in the merchandise sales. I see it in my group texts with a lot of friends who do not normally follow football," Nora Princiotti, a writer and self-proclaimed Swiftie, told NPR.
Swift's association with the NFL has brought backlash from some hardcore-football fans, or "Dads, Brads, and Chads," as she called them in her TIME Person of the Year interview in December.
But despite some criticism, the singer's appearance on the games has brought the league and the Chiefs around $330 million in brand value, according to the Apex Marketing Group.
Swift has had a career in music for over a decade, and she is not the first celebrity to date an NFL star, so why is this phenomenon occurring now?
Her re-recordings project, which came as a response to Scooter Braun buying her masters, brought a new element of nostalgia and passion to fans as they got to relive the re-release of her previous music. But it wasn't until she embarked on her viral Eras Tour that she solidified her status as the artist of 2023.
The Eras Tour, a 3-hour-long victory lap around her discography that took place throughout the year around the globe, first rose in popularity as its ticket rollout not only crashed Ticketmaster, but also brought the company into the U.S. Congress to dispute monopoly claims. The tour also made Swift a billionaire and served as a major national economic boost, bringing around $4.6 billion to the U.S. economy.
But the All Too Well singer is not only causing stir among sports fans. Following the Chiefs' victory in the AFC championships and their Super Bowl spot, some conservative voters, shared far-fetched theories such as Swift being a secret agent of the Pentagon, that she is bolstering her fan base in preparation for her endorsement of President Biden's re-election, and that she and Kelce are a contrived couple, assembled to boost the NVL or Covid vaccines for democrats.
"I wonder who's going to win the Super Bowl next month," Vivek Ramaswamy, the former presidential candidate turned Trump supporter, shared on social media on Monday. "And I wonder if there's a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall."
While it is true that Swift endorsed Biden in the 2020 presidential election, and that she has encouraged her fans repeatedly to register to vote, there is no evidence that her relationship with Kelce, or her presence in football games, has anything to do with politics or the upcoming election.
But now that the Chiefs have secured a spot in the Super Bowl, will the mega-star be in attendance for the biggest sport event of the year? Maybe.
As the Eras Tour picks up again, the singer will perform her last show in Tokyo on Feb. 10, the day before the Super Bowl.
"She can leave the concert in Tokyo at like 11:30, and if she goes right to the airport, flies to LA or Reno or Las Vegas or something, and then drives there, she should be able to be there, actually, by Saturday night," Princiotti calculates.
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