Swelce
The NFL has tried like hell to reach new demographics.
It plays three games a year in London now, will play two in Germany this season, and has a history of playing in Mexico, too. It has televised two playoff games on Nickelodeon (even using AR to turn the end zone into a pool of slime) and will broadcast the Super Bowl there. It has partnered with Roc Nation to produce the Super Bowl’s halftime show for five years. It has created an event to get women into the employment pipeline.
All it really needed, though, was for one of its most visible players to have a crush on one of the world’s most popular musicians.
As seemingly the whole world now knows that Taylor Swift (an Eagles fan, mind you) showed up at a Kansas City Chiefs game to cheer on Travis Kelce, there are numbers making the rounds on how much of an impact that “event” had on football:
The game Swift went to averaged 24.32 million viewers, and was the top broadcast of the week among women of all ages.
StubHub saw a 175% jump in Chiefs-Jets ticket sales three days after Swift's appearance at the Sept. 24 Chiefs game. 20% of the sales happened the night of her appearance.
Sales of Kelce’s Chiefs jersey saw a 400% spike in sales
The Swelce (h/t Kim) phenomenon, if you will, is having an impact bigger than anything the NFL has tried to plan.
There are, we’re sure, a bunch of think pieces out there about this topic. To us, though, the lesson is simple as Travis Kelce shooting his shot: Sometimes, you just get really f*cking lucky.