Mark Donovan, president of the NFL champion Kansas City Chiefs, highlighted the positive impact that the romantic relationship of pop star Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce has had on the team.
“I think the best thing I can say about the entire relationship and the impact it has had on us is that Taylor Swift is a true member of the Kansas City Chiefs kingdom,” the manager said before the ‘CNBC’ cameras.
Since September of last year, the singer of ‘All Too Well’ and the three-time Super Bowl champion began a relationship that boosted the popularity of Travis Kelce, the Chiefs and the NFL, thanks to the singer’s recurring presence on the team’s matches.
Taylor Swift once again cheered on Travis Kelce in an NFL game and the Kansas City Chiefs won again, this time over the Los Angeles Chargers 31-17.
One of the first benefits was the 400% increase in sales of Kelce’s number 87 jersey, a jersey that before he began his relationship with the singer was not even among the 10 best-selling in the NFL.
Last January, according to data from Apex Marketing Group, a company specialized in advertising and brand consulting services, Taylor Swift generated an economic impact of $331.5 million for the NFL and the Chiefs.
“It’s really a perfect situation because you have a music superstar and you combine him with an NFL guy, a big-name, high-profile athlete,” Eric Smallwood, president of Apex Marketing Group, said at the time.
Such a positive situation raised suspicions about whether the romantic relationship was based on a market strategist, something that Mark Donovan denied.
“I would love to say it was a ‘marketing’ strategy, but it is a genuine relationship and we are happy to have it. Taylor is a genuine fan, that matters to our fans and it matters to us; it is something we try to respect,” said the team president.
“We’re not trying to capitalize on this. We’re trying to celebrate it, but it’s not about doing too much or showing it off at every touchdown or anything like that,” he concluded.
The Chiefs once again break audience records
The champion Kansas City Chiefs once again broke the audience record for the 2024 NFL season, this time 31.2 million viewers, in Sunday’s loss to the Bufallo Bills, which ended their undefeated record.
This record is the best since the 2007 season, without taking into account games on special dates such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, according to ‘Sports Business Journal’ and Nielsen.
Patrick Mahomes, of the Kansas City Chiefs, evades Jordan Phillips, of the Buffalo Bills.LA PRESSE
The 31.2 million views also represent the fourth most watched broadcast since the 1988 season, not including Thanksgiving Day games.
Kansas City’s popularity has grown in the current decade in proportion to its winning streak in which it has played four of the recent five editions of the Super Bowl.
In this campaign, in which it seeks to become the first team in NFL history to win the Super Bowl three times in a row, it has appeared in four of the five most watched games.
In addition to the first place earned by its duel the previous Sunday against the Bills, it also has the second most followed window with 28 million viewers, a mark it set in the opening game of this season in which it defeated the Baltimore Ravens on September 5.
In the second week he maintained that trend and it earned him the third best record: 27.9 million views in the game in which they beat the Cincinnati Bengals.
The fifth position among the most followed games was obtained with the week 7 clash in which they defeated the San Francisco 49ers in a broadcast that 27.1 million viewers tuned in to.
Only the duel between Baltimore Ravens and Dallas Cowboys in the third week stands in the way of the monopoly of most consecutive confrontations. The lone star team, despite its losing campaign, had a maximum of 27.3 million views in said game.
In the eleventh week of this season, the average audience per NFL game is 17.5 million, the highest since the 2015 campaign.