This Taylor Swift thing isn’t just about football.
I’m about to start my third year coaching my daughter’s travel softball team. The girls on my team, who are mostly 10 years old now, didn’t care about what I did or talk to each other about football for two and a half years. That was something they left for their dads.
Then, six months ago, something changed. All of a sudden, I was coaching a squad full of Chiefs fans. You could call it a Taylor Swift Effect.
If you’re a parent of a young girl, you know what it’s like when your daughter starts to like football… or at least a single team, the Chiefs.
You read about how popular Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was if you didn’t go to one of her shows last summer.
Soon after, we found out that Chiefs defensive end Travis Kelce had been seeing Swift. In September, she started showing up at his games.
That’s when I saw that the girls on my team had changed. In September, we had practice the day after “Sunday Night Football” showed the Chiefs beating the Jets.
My girls were shocked when I told them that Coach Brian had been in the same building as Taylor Swift the evening before.
I just recently wrote an article called “It Might Be an Unpopular Opinion, but the NFL Being Constantly Displaying Taylor Swift at Chiefs Games is Annoying.”
I wrote in that piece about how I think the whole thing is merely an advertising ploy to get more viewers.
I’m not going to change what I said before because I continue to find it annoying. Still, I’ve found some facts and figures that support my claim even more, and I have to say that I’m pretty impressed.
Apex Marketing Group told Front Office Sports that Swift has given the Kansas City Chiefs or the NFL a brand worth a total of $331.5 million. After seeing the numbers, I can’t say I blame the NFL.
The number, which was found on January 22, comes from all the times Swift was mentioned in print, online, on the radio, on TV, in highlights, and on social media since the start of her career on September 24.
The dollar value for each mention was calculated by looking at how far it reached and how much it affected people.
Eric Smallwood, president of Apex, says that online news along with digital content have created the most value.
Social media has come in second. To give you an idea, that number was $166 million in the middle of October, says Smallwood.
There are rumors that the pop star is dating KC Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. She has been creating waves after going to several games, which has led to big increases in NFL ratings.
NBC said that between the two groups of growth, the number of female viewers rose by about 2 million.
Swift went to the Kansas City Chiefs vs. New York Jets game on Sunday night, which NBC Sports says had 27 million viewers, making it the most-watched Monday TV show because of the last Super Bowl.
Teenage girls watched 53% more of “Sunday Night Football” than they did on average over the first three weeks of the season.
Watching by women ages 18 to 24 went up by 24%, and watching by women over 35 went up by 34%.
Collins also said that Swift’s ability to “engage” her fans, who are called “Swifties,” is great for a huge company like the NFL.
“There was a group of people that checked into these games who the NFL doesn’t typically reach,” he said.
“Those people are stepping up not because they’ll be fans of the NFL, which indicates that the sport is now benefiting from the additional meaning linked to it.”
The professor also said that the NFL could learn more about these new fans and keep their attention in meaningful ways.
“What about these people, besides their love of Taylor Swift, could the NFL use to make a show?” “That is the important question,” he said.
Clayton Durant, proprietor of CAD Management, a music leadership and entertainment consulting firm, said that the NFL might need to change by getting different kinds of advertisers or making more changes to the productions during games to better serve this new audience.