Culture

A Taylor Swift love story: How pop icon is bringing a new, young audience to the NFL

Published

2 years ago

February 9, 2024

A Taylor Swift love story: How pop icon is bringing a new, young audience to the NFL

Arrie Flathouse took her first steps to Taylor Swift’s hit song “Tim McGraw.”

The pop icon was a constant part of the now 16-year-old Arrie’s childhood as she grew up in the Houston area with two older sisters who adored Swift. Arrie came to love Swift, too, dressing up as her for Halloween and listening to her albums.

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Arrie never got much into football, though, despite having a mom, Kara, who spent her weekends tuned into college and NFL games. That included games played by the Chiefs since Kara, like Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes, is a Texas Tech alum. Despite Kara’s attempts to get her daughters interested, football never clicked with Arrie, so Kara usually spent those weekend afternoons watching games alone.

But that changed last summer after Arrie saw clips of the “New Heights” podcast, on which one of the hosts, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, described his attempts to give Swift his number via a friendship bracelet.

Anyone know how to get a bracelet to @taylorswift13? … asking for a friend 😅 @BWWings
New episode premieres NOW!
Tap in: https://t.co/lmQ8fLH1IO pic.twitter.com/4yYr8HSb0m
— New Heights (@newheightshow) July 26, 2023

The little exchange had quite an impact on Arrie.

Already a devoted listener to the podcast, Kara got so excited when her daughter started talking about the Kelce clips. Over the following months, social media worked its magic, and by the time Swift showed up to her first Chiefs game in late September, Arrie was tuned in.

“This is crazy,” Arrie said. “This isn’t Swifties’ theories. This is for real. So that’s when I started watching football because I was like, ‘If she’s gonna be at the games, I’ve got to see her.’”

Arrie has since tuned into pretty much every Chiefs game, embracing not only the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce romance but the entire Kelce family. She’s watched Amazon Prime’s documentary about his brother, Eagles center Jason Kelce, became a devoted listener of the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights” podcast and even started watching Eagles games.

“Even if Taylor is not there, I think I enjoy (the game) a lot more,” said Arrie, whose parents promised to buy her a Travis Kelce jersey soon.

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Kara smiles listening to her daughter describe her newfound interest in a sport she bonded over with her own dad. Kara doesn’t want to push too hard, but she loves it when she sees Arrie’s head pop over the stair banister if she hears football on the TV. Much to Kara’s delight, that tends to lead to quality time together watching games with her daughter. It’s also led to questions about the sport itself.

“It’s been really fun for me,” said Kara, who posted a viral video in the fall about her glee that Swift finally converted her daughter to a football fan. “I love it.”

The Flathouse family isn’t an anomaly. Far from it. Swift’s arrival on the football stage has led to countless stories of football-loving parents bonding with their Swiftie kids. Even Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt is hearing them.

“I frequently have dads come up to me and say, ‘My 10- and 12-year-old daughters never used to watch football, but they now tell me anytime the Kansas City Chiefs are playing to tell them so they can watch,” Hunt said this week in Las Vegas, where the Chiefs are preparing to face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII. “I was at a function a little over a week ago and I had a woman, probably in her mid-20s, who came up to me, introduced herself as a Swiftie and told me her entire family is Dallas Cowboys fans and that she used to not follow football at all, but now she’s all-in on the Kansas City Chiefs. I think there are a lot of examples like that out there.”

One story just like that belongs to Todd Kale, a Cowboys fan who posted a now-viral video of his 11-year-old daughter Briley reciting football facts from the couch.

The Kale family lives near Houston. They’re Cowboys season-ticket holders and their five daughters love going to games. They know the big-name Dallas players but never really watched the game with their dad, instead embracing the atmosphere of a game day or just enjoying eating hot wings, their Sunday ritual, rather than engaging much with the actual football.

But Briley, the middle child of the family, grew up a Swift fan thanks to her older sisters and has passed the love for Swift onto her younger siblings. Todd wasn’t sure how Briley first learned of Swift’s connection to Kelce, but a few months back, he was watching a Sunday night game with his wife and realized Briley was in the living room. She started asking questions: What’s a safety? What’s a cornerback? How many points is a touchdown worth?

It didn’t take long for Todd to realize where this was coming from.

“It definitely intrigued her that somebody she really likes is now involved in something I really like,” Todd said.

Briley has since watched more Chiefs games and has picked up knowledge about the sport itself, absorbing it all.

“It’s every dad’s dream. … She liked football before, but I think she just liked the experience of it,” Todd said. “Now she’s learning more about the game.”

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Swift has been a storyline all season — with Kansas City winning nine of the 12 games she has attended — and the Chiefs’ Super Bowl run has only ratcheted that up a higher level.

“There’s no doubt her being a fan has put a more intense focus on the team than we would’ve had otherwise,” Hunt said. “It has opened up the fan base to a whole new demographic that we really didn’t have in young women. You’ve seen that in a lot of ways, specifically our TV ratings. They are much higher because of Taylor Swift being a part of the team, as Kelce says.”

Hunt’s not wrong about the TV ratings. Not only did the average number of viewers tuning into Chiefs regular-season prime-time games increase this season from the previous two (a 39.4 percent jump compared to last year alone), but so did the percentage of female viewers (up 3 percent), according to Nielsen. And that viewership jump has carried over to the postseason. The Chiefs’ divisional-round win over Buffalo averaged 50.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched divisional-round or wild-card game ever. The Chiefs’ victory over the Ravens was the most-watched AFC Championship Game ever, with an average of 55.47 million viewers tuning in.

Taylor Swift has generated an equivalent brand value of $331.5 million for the Chiefs and the NFL, Apex Marketing Group tells FOS.
The figure includes print, digital, radio, TV, highlights, and social media going back to Swift’s first game in September.https://t.co/xUzMDsqIgE pic.twitter.com/Ruj5FM7g81
Advertisement

— Front Office Sports (@FOS) January 28, 2024

The league’s social media team has played a big role in ushering in new audiences, as well. The team embraced Swift’s first game in September, trying to be conscious of all of the new eyeballs on their feeds while not going overboard, said Ian Trombetta, NFL SVP of social and influencer marketing.

That theme has remained consistent throughout the season, though the strategy varies depending on the platform, Trombetta said. With some of those that skew younger, like TikTok and Snapchat, there’s more reason to embrace Swifties with their posts.

“We’re also thinking about this in the sense of not just what we’re posting on social media, but also how our partners are covering it,” Trombetta said. “So that could be a broadcast partner. That could be a sponsor, etc. And when you take all that into totality, it can get pretty, pretty hot just in terms of the amount of coverage. And, so for us, I think it really was a reminder for us to take a broader view of all the coverage and understand our role in it.”

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Swift’s emergence onto the NFL scene has helped lead to record-setting engagement, with triple-digit growth in consumption across various platforms, per Trombetta. Their audience continues to skew younger and diversify in male/female split as well, he said.

Swift’s Super Bowl attendance is up in the air thanks to her Eras Tour stop in Tokyo, If Swift is there to watch Kelce’s Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49ers, the league social team will devote some time to her arrival and reactions, but with so much happening around the Super Bowl between the football and the spectacle, it won’t just be the Taylor Swift social feed.

“I think we’ve gotten to the point now though, that by and large, it’s been a very celebratory thing,” Trombetta said. “And certainly a positive for the league, a positive for the Chiefs, a positive for the Kelce family, and obviously with Travis, and I think it’s been a positive for Taylor as well. So we’ll continue to lean into it in different ways, but also be respectful of their relationship. So not invading any privacy and looking to take cues where some of the lines might be on the amount of coverage and also keep the game front and center. That’s really important for us.”

Still, there’s no doubt the league has brought in new fans thanks to Swift, as the Flathouse and Kale families can attest.

The Flathouse family on Sunday will be hosting an “I’m in My Super Bowl Era” themed party in honor of the Chiefs-Swift crossover.

There will be a giant friendship bracelet garland along with appropriately themed food and drink, including an “electric” mocktail, in honor of a word Kelce likes to use a lot.

But what about next season when the Swift magic may have run its course? It doesn’t matter for Arrie, who plans on still tuning into NFL games.

“I feel like I’m hooked now,” Arrie said.

— The Athletic’s Nate Taylor contributed to this report.

(Photo illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic;
Photos: Jamie Squire, Patrick Smith and Sarah Stier / Getty Images)

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Culture

Video: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects

Published

2 weeks ago

December 18, 2025

Press Room

Video: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects

new video loaded: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects

To capture Jane Austen’s brief life and enormous impact, editors at The New York Times Book Review assembled a sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness she has brought to our lives.

By Jennifer Harlan, Sadie Stein, Claire Hogan, Laura Salaberry and Edward Vega

December 18, 2025

Culture

Try This Quiz and See How Much You Know About Jane Austen

Published

3 weeks ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Try This Quiz and See How Much You Know About Jane Austen

“Window seat with garden view / A perfect nook to read a book / I’m lost in my Jane Austen…” sings Kristin Chenoweth in “The Girl in 14G” — what could be more ideal? Well, perhaps showing off your literary knowledge and getting a perfect score on this week’s super-size Book Review Quiz Bowl honoring the life, work and global influence of Jane Austen, who turns 250 today. In the 12 questions below, tap or click your answers to the questions. And no matter how you do, scroll on to the end, where you’ll find links to free e-book versions of her novels — and more.

Culture

Revisiting Jane Austen’s Cultural Impact for Her 250th Birthday

Published

3 weeks ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Revisiting Jane Austen’s Cultural Impact for Her 250th Birthday

On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England — the seventh of eight children — to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world.

Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved — as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances — but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they’ve never actually read “Pride and Prejudice.”

With her 250th birthday this year, the Austen Industrial Complex has kicked into high gear with festivals, parades, museum exhibits, concerts and all manner of merch, ranging from the classily apt to the flamboyantly absurd. The words “Jane mania” have been used; so has “exh-Aust-ion.”

How to capture this brief life, and the blazing impact that has spread across the globe in her wake? Without further ado: a mere sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness Austen has brought to our lives. After all, your semiquincentennial doesn’t come around every day.

By ‘A Lady’

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Austen published just four novels in her lifetime: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814) and “Emma” (1815). All of them were published anonymously, with the author credited simply as “A Lady.” (If you’re in New York, you can see this first edition for yourself at the Grolier Club through Feb. 14.)

Where the Magic Happened

Janice Chung for The New York Times

Placed near a window for light, this diminutive walnut table was, according to family lore, where the author did much of her writing. It is now in the possession of the Jane Austen Society.

An Iconic Accessory

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Few of Austen’s personal artifacts remain, contributing to the author’s mystique. One of them is this turquoise ring, which passed to her sister-in-law and then her niece after her death. In 2012, the ring was put up for auction and bought by the “American Idol” champion Kelly Clarkson. This caused quite a stir in England; British officials were loath to let such an important cultural artifact leave the country’s borders. Jane Austen’s House, the museum now based in the writer’s Hampshire home, launched a crowdfunding campaign to Bring the Ring Home and bought the piece from Clarkson. The real ring now lives at the museum; the singer has a replica.

Austen Onscreen

Since 1940, when Austen had a bit of a moment and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in MGM’s rather liberally reinterpreted “Pride and Prejudice,” there have been more than 20 international adaptations of Austen’s work made for film and TV (to say nothing of radio). From the sublime (Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning “Sense and Sensibility”) to the ridiculous (the wholly gratuitous 2022 remake of “Persuasion”), the high waists, flickering firelight and double weddings continue to provide an endless stream of debate fodder — and work for a queen’s regiment of British stars.

Jane Goes X-Rated

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The rumors are true: XXX Austen is a thing. “Jane Austen Kama Sutra,” “Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen” and enough slash fic and amateur porn to fill Bath’s Assembly Rooms are just the start. Purists may never recover.

A Lady Unmasked

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Austen’s final two completed novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published after her death. Her brother Henry, who oversaw their publication, took the opportunity to give his sister the recognition he felt she deserved, revealing the true identity of the “Lady” behind “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma,” etc. in a biographical note. “The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public,” he wrote, extolling his sister’s imagination, good humor and love of dancing. Still, “no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen.”

Wearable Tributes

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan wants to find other Jane Austen fans, and what better way to advertise your membership in that all-inclusive club than with a bit of merch — from the subtle and classy to the gloriously obscene.

The Austen Literary Universe

Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York Times

On the page, there is no end to the adventures Austen and her characters have been on. There are Jane Austen mysteries, Jane Austen vampire series, Jane Austen fantasy adventures, Jane Austen Y.A. novels and, of course, Jane Austen romances, which transpose her plots to a remote Maine inn, a Greenwich Village penthouse and the Bay Area Indian American community, to name just a few. You can read about Austen-inspired zombie hunters, time-traveling hockey players, Long Island matchmakers and reality TV stars, or imagine further adventures for some of your favorite characters. (Even the obsequious Mr. Collins gets his day in the sun.)

A Botanical Homage

Created in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, the “Jane Austen” rose is characterized by its intense orange color and light, sweet perfume. It is bushy, healthy and easy to grow.

Aunt Jane

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Hoping to cement his beloved aunt’s legacy, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published this biography — a rather rosy portrait based on interviews with family members — five decades after her death. The book is notable not only as the source (biased though it may be) of many of the scant facts we know about her life, but also for the watercolor portrait by James Andrews that serves as its frontispiece. Based on a sketch by Cassandra, this depiction of Jane is softer and far more winsome than the original: Whether that is due to a lack of skill on her sister’s part or overly enthusiastic artistic license on Andrews’s, this is the version of Austen most familiar to people today.

Cultural Currency

Steve Parsons/Associated Press

In 2017, the Bank of England released a new 10-pound note featuring Andrews’s portrait of Austen, as well as a line from “Pride and Prejudice”: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” Austen is the third woman — other than the queen — to be featured on British currency, and the only one currently in circulation.

In the Trenches

During World War I and World War II, British soldiers were given copies of Austen’s works. In his 1924 story “The Janeites,” Rudyard Kipling invoked the grotesque contrasts — and the strange comfort — to be found in escaping to Austen’s well-ordered world amid the horrors of trench warfare. As one character observes, “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.”

Baby Janes

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

You’re never too young to learn to love Austen — or that one’s good opinion, once lost, may be lost forever.

The Austen Industrial Complex

Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York Times

Maybe you’ve not so much as seen a Jane Austen meme, let alone read one of her novels. No matter! Need a Jane Austen finger puppet? Lego? Magnetic poetry set? Lingerie? Nameplate necklace? Plush book pillow? License plate frame? Bath bomb? Socks? Dog sweater? Whiskey glass? Tarot deck? Of course you do! And you’re in luck: What a time to be alive.

Around the Globe

Goucher College Special Collections & Archives, Alberta H. and Henry G. Burke Collection; via The Morgan Library & Museum

Austen’s novels have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Farsi. There are active chapters of the Jane Austen Society, her 21st-century fan club, throughout the world.

Playable Persuasions

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

In Austen’s era, no afternoon tea was complete without a rousing round of whist, a trick-taking card game played in two teams of two. But should you not be up on your Regency amusements, you can find plenty of contemporary puzzles and games with which to fill a few pleasant hours, whether you’re piecing together her most beloved characters or using your cunning and wiles to land your very own Mr. Darcy.

#SoJaneAusten

The wild power of the internet means that many Austen moments have taken on lives of their own, from Colin Firth’s sopping wet shirt and Matthew Macfadyen’s flexing hand to Mr. Collins’s ode to superlative spuds and Mr. Knightley’s dramatic floor flop. The memes are fun, yes, but they also speak to the universality of Austen’s writing: More than two centuries after her books were published, the characters and stories she created are as relatable as ever.

Bonnets Fit for a Bennett

Peter Flude for The New York Times

For this summer’s Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England — as well as the myriad picnics, balls, house parties, dinners, luncheons, teas and fetes that marked the anniversary — seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers and costume warehouses did a brisk business, attiring the faithful in authentic Regency finery. And that’s a commitment: A bespoke, historically accurate bonnet can easily run to hundreds of dollars.

Most Ardently, Jane

The Morgan Library & Museum

Austen was prolific correspondent, believed to have written thousands of letters in her lifetime, many to her sister, Cassandra. But in an act that has frustrated biographers for centuries, upon Jane’s death, Cassandra protected her sister’s privacy — and reputation? — by burning almost all of them, leaving only about 160 intact, many heavily redacted. But what survives is filled with pithy one-liners. To wit: “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”

Stage and Sensibility

Austen’s works have been adapted numerous times for the stage. Some plays (and musicals) hew closely to the original text, while others — such as Emily Breeze’s comedic riff on “Pride and Prejudice,” “Are the Bennet Girls OK?”, which is running at New York City’s West End Theater through Dec. 21 — use creative license to explore ideas of gender, romance and rage through a contemporary lens.

Austen 101

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Austen remains a reliable fount of academic scholarship; recent conference papers have focused on the author’s enduring global reach, the work’s relationship to modern intersectionality, digital humanities and “Jane Austen on the Cheap.” And as one professor told our colleague Sarah Lyall of the Austen amateur scholarship hive, “Woe betide the academic who doesn’t take them seriously.”