This season the Kansas City Chiefs gained a new fan, Taylor Swift, and the NFL immediately felt the impact. Taylor Swift’s attendance at games not only correlated with boosted viewership (particularly with the female audience), but also led to an influx of interest in the NFL’s social media.
Despite complaints from “a few dads, Brads, and Chads,” Taylor Swift was shown for mere seconds each game while she cheered on Travis Kelce and the Chiefs, but those seconds translated to millions of views, impressions and engagements on social media, where the NFL shared game day content featuring Taylor Swift.
While Taylor Swift’s impact on the NFL was clear to anyone even remotely tuned in to sports or pop culture, analyzing data from this season and playoffs can quantify the “Taylor Swift effect” on NFL social media specifically.
NFL Social Media (Taylor’s Version)
From the 1st game Taylor Swift attended in Week 3, the NFL felt her influence immediately particularly via social media. With over 80M engagements across X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, Week 3 was the NFL’s 4th biggest week of the regular season on social media. A Taylor Swift post with 8.9M impressions and 917K engagements was the #1 piece of content for that whole week. She was also at the Chiefs game during Week 16, the 3rd biggest week for the NFL on social media outside the first and last week’s of the regular season.
Overall, Taylor Swift content made up a tiny fraction of the NFL’s content during the season and playoffs. Out of over 19K posts from NFL accounts, only 0.56% featured Taylor Swift. However, these 106 posts were incredibly high-performing, earning a total of 17.3 million engagements and 369 million impressions, equating to over $10.5 million worth of social value.
Taylor Swift content also averaged 2.2x more impressions and 4.1x more engagement than the NFL’s average post. Plus, two of the NFL’s top five posts for the whole season featured Taylor Swift, one after the Conference Championship and one after the Super Bowl.
NFL TikTok Joins SwiftTok
Taylor Swift content was particularly successful on the NFL’s TikTok, where the algorithm helped videos reach far beyond the NFL’s own following. In total, TikToks featuring Taylor Swift amassed 333 million views and 1.48 million engagements. On average, a Taylor TikTok on the NFL’s channel had over 3.66M views.
@nfl catching kelce 🤷 #traviskelce #kansascity #chiefs #nfl #taylorswift ♬ original sound - NFL
@nfl in a custom kelce jacket by @Kristin Juszczyk 🤩 #taylorswift #kansascity #chiefs #nfl #nflplayoffs ♬ Little Life - Cordelia
Views peaked during the 1st game with 83M views for 14 TikToks, but the Super Bowl was close behind with 19 TikToks and 79M views. 42% of the NFL’s Taylor Swift views came during the last four playoff games, where content about Taylor averaged 35M views per game.
The NFL’s top five Swift TikToks each have over 15M views as of February 22nd. One was a Swift-themed broadcast call of a Travis Kelce touchdown posted before Swift even attended a game. Two were during her 1st game in Week 3, including the biggest post of Travis and Taylor post-game with 21.8M views. The last two were celebrations after the Conference Championship and Super Bowl respectively.
@nfl what a moment for travis and taylor ❤️ #taylorswift #traviskelce #kansascitychiefs #micdup #nfl #nflplayoffs ♬ original sound - NFL
@nfl p solid day for the two of them 🫡 #taylorswift #traviskelce #kansascitychiefs #nfl ♬ original sound - NFL
From Week 3 to the Super Bowl, Taylor Swift’s rookie season in the NFL couldn’t have been any better. As for the NFL’s Taylor Swift era, it was pretty successful too. Even with all of the discourse, it’s clear that Taylor Swift introduced the NFL to a new audience, and the NFL strategically used social media to embrace these fans.
