Lifestyle
The Swift-Kelce romance sounds like a movie. But the NFL swears it wasn't scripted
Fans hold up signs during the NFL game between Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs in Germany in November.
Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
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Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
Fans hold up signs during the NFL game between Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs in Germany in November.
Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
Boy meets girl while she’s in the midst of a record-breaking world tour. Girl falls for boy, showing up to his football games and driving TV ratings, attendance and merchandise sales in the process. Boy’s team overcomes a bumpy season to win the AFC championship game. And the two, wearing matching bracelets, steal the spotlight with their embrace on the field.
Now boy’s team is headed to its fourth Super Bowl in five years. And people are betting not only on who will win, but how often girl — who has since been named Time person of the year — will be shown in the stands (assuming she can get there in time).
The romance of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood movie — not to mention a huge win for the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL itself. It’s created a legion of new football fans while also fueling PR stunt accusations and right-wing conspiracy theories, including that the league scripted their relationship to boost views.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell laughed off the notion at his pre-Super Bowl press conference on Monday, replying that “I don’t think I’m that good a scripter, or anybody on our staff.” But he was quick to acknowledge the positive impact Swift has had on the season.
“Obviously, it creates a buzz. It creates another group of young fans, particularly young women that are interested in seeing, ‘Why is she going to this game? Why is she interested in this game?’” Gooddell said. “Besides Travis, she is a football fan, and I think that’s great for us.”
The numbers say so too. Swift’s association with Kelce has generated an equivalent brand value of $331.5 million for the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL, as of late January, according to Apex Marketing Group.
President Eric Smallwood told NPR that the figure is likely to grow, since it’s from before the Chiefs’ championship victory — which drew more than 55 million viewers to become the most-watched AFC title game in NFL history.
While there have been influential celebrity sports couples before, Smallwood says he’s never seen anything like this.
“It’s taking entertainment and mixing it with the top sport in the U.S., now with the top event of the year, viewing audience-wise,” Smallwood said. “It’s a phenomenon. It’s the Taylor effect for sure.”
Swift’s star power draws more female football fans
Taylor Swift watches a game between the Chicago Bears and the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri on September 24.
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Taylor Swift watches a game between the Chicago Bears and the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri on September 24.
Jason Hanna/Getty Images
Fans started speculating about Swift and Kelce’s budding relationship over the summer, as the first U.S. leg of Swift’s Eras Tour was in full swing.
The tour has grossed a record over $1 billion so far, selling out stadiums and boosting local economies along the way. Average attendance at a U.S. Swift concert in 2023 was over 71,000, versus more than 69,000 for regular season NFL games, according to Smallwood.
“She’s filled more football stadiums than any football team has this year, if you think about it,” he added.
Nora Princiotti, a football writer for The Ringer and a Swiftie, called the Eras Tour the pop culture event of the year.
“And midway through the first big leg of it, she starts dating Travis Kelce … the star tight end of this budding Kansas City dynasty,” Princiotti told NPR last month. “So you have these two elements of our last bits of monoculture sort of coming together, and it really created this phenomenon.”
Swift attended her first Chiefs game in late September, then 11 more. Her presence in the Kelce box, usually alongside family members and famous friends, thrilled fans watching on TV and social media.
The Chiefs-Jets game she attended on Oct. 1 averaged 27 million viewers — including 2 million women — making it the most-watched Sunday show since last year’s Super Bowl, according to NBC. By the end of the regular season, the NFL had seen its highest ratings since 2015, and the highest-regular season viewership among women since it started tracking the statistic in 2000.
Football is the most-watched sport in the U.S., and one of the most profitable, despite its myriad of issues involving race and diversity, concussions and other safety concerns, and its handling of athletes’ misconduct allegations off the field.
Women make up just under half of the NFL fanbase, but more than half of Swift’s. And it’s a demographic that the NFL has long struggled to reach, Princiotti said — until now.
“You see it 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,” she explained. “They don’t have, suddenly, hot takes about the Jets’ defensive line, but they know what’s going on in a way that is different from before this started to happen.”
Candy Lee, a professor of journalism and integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University, says while some Swifties may be driven by a passion for the game, many are driven by “heart’s passion.”
“We all enjoy rooting for the ‘win,’ even if it’s our team, the romance, the celebrity,” she told NPR over email. “In this case, it brings sparkle to the game for a group of fans of entertainment, which is what both [the Eras Tour] and football season have in common.”
The path to Las Vegas wasn’t necessarily direct
Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift celebrate after the Kansas City Chiefs win AFC Championship Game at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on January 28.
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Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift celebrate after the Kansas City Chiefs win AFC Championship Game at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on January 28.
Patrick Smith/Getty Images
A lot of things had to go right this season for Swift, Kelce and the Chiefs to end up where they are now, as Smallwood pointed out.
“I don’t think you can write the script for this,” he said.
The two were able to travel to each others’ events — and generate buzz — despite their jam-packed schedules. Swift was able to travel to Chiefs games from her South America concerts, while Kelce used the team’s bye week to attend one of Swift’s concerts in Argentina.
The defending Super Bowl champs had a rocky season on the field, marked by offensive struggles and injuries, including Kelce’s. Smallwood says that the majority of Super Bowl ad spots were sold in November, at which point no one could have predicted the Chiefs would be one of the teams on the field.
“A lot of things have to happen and it happened,” Smallwood said. “It happened for the benefit of the NFL, the benefit of the Super Bowl, and the benefit of the Chiefs — not to mention the [San Francisco] 49ers.”
The surge in viewership definitely helped the NFL sell advertising around its games, Smallwood says. It also means new advertisers, particularly in the health and beauty industries, may be getting in on the Super Bowl action to try to reach the growing female fan base.
The Super Bowl is already one of the most popular TV events each year. Last year’s Chiefs vs. Eagles matchup — which pitted the two Kelce brothers against each other — was the most-watched U.S.-based telecast of all time, drawing an average of 115.1 million viewers across all platforms.
This year’s could draw even more viewers, thanks in large part to Swift.
The “Taylor Effect” is poised to make the Super Bowl even bigger
Coasters from Westside Storey commemorating Swift and Kelce’s relationship are displayed in Kansas City, Mo., on Monday.
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Coasters from Westside Storey commemorating Swift and Kelce’s relationship are displayed in Kansas City, Mo., on Monday.
Nick Ingram/AP
A Seton Hall Sports Poll released Wednesday found that 72% of Americans plan to tune into the Super Bowl, up from 66% last year.
When asked if they thought Swift had anything to do with that decision, or that of anyone in their household, 21% of respondents said yes. That number was almost twice as high for 18-to-24 year-olds.
“From a marketing perspective, the NFL and its advertisers couldn’t do any better,” marketing Professor Daniel Ladik, chief methodologist for the poll, said in a statement. “The viewership for this game is on a seemingly inexorable march toward more viewers, and this year Taylor Swift may be playing the role of drum major — at least for 18-34 year olds, a market that almost everyone covets.”
Other polls drew similar conclusions.
A recent survey of 2,000 Americans by the online lending marketplace LendingTree found that 24% of Gen Z-ers and 20% of millennials are more interested in football because of Swift. Eighteen percent of Americans — and 31% of Gen Z-ers — said they’re rooting for the Chiefs because of her.
And 16% of Americans said Swift had influenced them to spend money on football, such as buying memorabilia or signing up for a streaming service to watch games.
“If there’s one thing that people should’ve learned all too well by now, it’s that you should never be surprised by the enormity of Swift’s influence,” LendingTree chief credit analyst Matt Schulz said. “We’ve seen it with her records and concerts, of course, but we’ve also seen it in movies, politics, and now football.”
Earlier this week, Swift announced that an extended version of her Eras Tour concert film, which set multiple box office records of its own after it was released in October, will head to Disney+ in March. The following month she will release her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, which she announced at last weekend’s Grammy Awards.
Just like with the concert, Swifties are more likely to be watching the Super Bowl on screen than in person, though a study from one company found that 1% of them would sell an organ to pay for the experience. And if the how-to guides cropping up online this week are any indication, the Swift-themed watch parties are likely to be very glittery.
Author Julia Elliott won for her short story collection Hellions.
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Forrest Clonts/Tin House
Writer Julia Elliott has won this year’s Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Hellions. The award honors work by women and nonbinary authors in the U.S. and Canada.
Elliott, who also authored the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch and the short story collection The Wilds, is known for blending elements of Southern gothic horror, surrealism and fairy tale. Hellions, published in 2025, includes stories set against backdrops like a plague-stricken medieval convent, a feminist art colony, and small Southern towns.
“This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of Hellions crackles or crawls,” wrote the prize jury in a statement. “Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic … But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control.”
The prize, named after a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, awards $150,000 to one winner each year. Novels, short story collections, and graphic novels by women and nonbinary authors are eligible.
This year’s finalists included Quiara Alegría Hudes (The White Hot), Lee Lai (Cannon), Megha Majumdar (A Guardian and a Thief), and Sonya Walger (Lion). They will each receive $12,500.
The Carol Shields Prize went to writer Canisia Lubrin in 2025.
You can listen to actor Donna Lynne Champlin read Elliott’s story “Hellion” on the Death, Sex & Money podcast here.
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By Helen Shaw, Vanessa Friedman, Léo Hamelin, Laura Salaberry and Sutton Raphael
June 2, 2026
At around 1 in the morning at the Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood, four masc lesbians in cowboy hats and chaps were dancing on top of the bar while bartenders attempted to continue making espresso martinis beneath them.
One performer crawled into the crowd and between the spread legs of an audience member, licking the air between their thighs. Another wrapped a belt around their girlfriend’s neck while thrusting against her to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name.” The ravenous audience, almost entirely women, fluttered dollar bills all around, while easily filling the saloon’s 300-person capacity.
Across Los Angeles, countless strip clubs and revue shows were unfolding at that same hour, though none quite like this and likely few provoking this level of frenzy. The night had all the riotous energy of a scene from “Coyote Ugly,” with the choreographed masculinity of “Magic Mike.” Playing on the latter’s name, this was the doing of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian revue, by sapphics for sapphics.
Skye Valentinez, from left, Alexa Legend, Daddii Syd and King Captain are members of Magic Mascs, an all-masc lesbian and translesbian collective, that started in February.
“Our idea was to give lesbians what men get all the time at a strip club, but instead of just sitting around and singing ‘Pink Pony Club,’ actually going wild,” said group founder Daddii Syd, a.k.a. Syd Latimore.
The performers, self-described “daddies” — Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend, Skye Valentinez and King Captain — formed Magic Mascs in February. The performance at the Saloon was their third overall, but the group has already become an institution within lesbian nightlife in Los Angeles. They will make their debut during a Pride Month performance on Friday at Womxn Pride’s rooftop party in downtown L.A.
The members come from professional dance backgrounds. King Captain entered dance school at age 12 and taught dance for nearly a decade. Daddii Syd has danced since childhood. Alexa Legend spent years go-go dancing across clubs in the city before joining the troupe. Skye Valentinez, the baby of the group — cherub-faced, smiling through braces — is the newest to performing, though she steps into it naturally, exhibiting the same living, breathing caricature of masculinity as the rest of them.
“No one’s trying to be cisgender,” King Captain makes clear. “We’re not trying to be the kind of men who are born into and fed by patriarchy,” Daddii Syd added. “We’re redefining masculinity.”
King Captain gets their underwear stuffed with dollar bills from the crowd.
Magic Mascs’ success follows a broader trend of lesbians confidently stepping into masculinity before hungry eyes. In the past year, performative masc competitions have appeared across the country, with lesbians — hair slicked back and carabiners dangling from their Carhartt jeans — showing off in front of leering crowds. Magic Mascs feels like a more professionalized version of that phenomenon, less tongue-in-cheek — just tongue.
“We always knew there was a huge hunger for this,” Daddii Syd said.
Their first performance, in San Diego, sold out fast.
“I knew right away we were onto something special,” Daddii Syd said.
Videos of the troupe traveled far across sapphics’ algorithms, especially clips of King Captain, whose devoted fan base — known collectively as “The Castle” — make arduous trips just to see them in the flesh. One fan drove more than 20 hours from Dallas to San Diego to see Magic Mascs. Another sent an edible fruit bouquet from Australia.
Backstage, every gesture from the troupe was ultra-confident. Captain, wearing briefs stuffed with a sock full of rice, talked to me with a leg cocked on the footrest of my stool. Daddii Syd, Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez stood pelvis-forward, hands behind their heads, flexing ropey muscles. They loved the camera, eyeing it like prey while tipping the brims of their cowboy hats. (“You guys are like the modern-day Beatles,” our photographer said.)
King Captain gets the Hollywood crowd into a frenzy during a recent show.
Everything in the show revolved around their hips. The performers rolled and glided before delivering sudden, mechanical thrusts powerful enough to rattle nearby glasses. Their bodies were taut with effort and exaggerated lust. Daddii Syd performed with her girlfriend Jamie in matching plaid, not leaving much to the imagination as they licked whipped cream off each other.
Alexa Legend, who described herself as shy offstage, eventually stripped down to nipple pasties and a cowboy hat, firing confetti from her crotch into the crowd. King Captain swerved their hips like a powerful mechanical bull. “Oh, Captain, my captain,” someone in the crowd said, hand pressed dramatically to her forehead.
They paid particular attention to a woman in a wheelchair in the crowd — typical of their performances — asking if they could sit on the wheelchair. They received keen consent. “That was, um, very nice,” she told me after, still a little lost for words.
“We’re huge on consent,” Daddii Syd said. At the start of the show, they told the crowd to cross their arms in a Wakanda Forever pose if they didn’t wish to be touched. They checked in constantly while moving through the crowd, leaning close to ask questions like, “Is this OK?” and “Anywhere you don’t like to be touched?”
Captain learned these habits through work in intimacy coordination and under the mentorship of Tonia Sina, among the first professional intimacy coordinators in Hollywood. That ethos of care extended beyond their interactions with the audience and into the way they interacted with one another offstage.
“We want everyone in the crowd to feel gorgeous,” King Captain said before the recent show at Sassafras Saloon in Hollywood.
King Captain, left, and Lauren Henson, a stage kitten for the Magic Mascs, perform together on the bar.
Forming a sanctuary for themselves was just as important to the troupe as emboldening others’ desire. “It’s hard to find other masc friends,” Daddii Syd said. “Everybody’s weirdly competitive and trying to sabotage each other.” King Captain agreed, asking: “Why can’t we all be daddies at the same time?”
Daddii Syd and King Captain, who are both in their 30s, had little butch representation or friendship growing up and they have now become something like father figures to Alexa Legend and Skye Valentinez, who are in their 20s.
“We have to protect each other,” King Captain said. “We have to look out for each other.”
Daddii Syd put her arm around Skye Valentinez and said: “Look at this beautiful baby we have.”
That tenderness carried straight into the night. There was a striking seriousness to the whole performance, which spanned from just past 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Unlike a bachelorette party or the typical male revue, there was no giggling in the room, and no wink of camp from the performers. Here was a rare claim to unabashed public sapphic desire; it was given the scale and seriousness routinely afforded to heterosexual display, like the gleeful bravado of a man striding into Hooters.
By the end of the night at Sassafras Saloon, the performers had stripped down nearly to nothing, pouring water over themselves while the audience roared. The atmosphere felt like one of collective release, a recognition that masculinity and desire don’t belong only to men — that a group of four masc lesbians can be horny, inspire horniness and ultimately stir a hysteria that once greeted Channing Tatum or even the Beatles.
It was the magnitude of the response that night at the Saloon, as on every other night they’ve performed, that’s inspiring their next moves: total domination in sum. The troupe is already planning a national tour through Florida, Dallas and Sacramento, though Daddii Syd’s ambitions extend much further.
“The idea,” she told me, “is to go global. Like a boy band.”
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