The NFL has gone all in on advertising the new relationship between Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end, Travis Kelce, and music star Taylor Swift.
The league changed its Instagram bio to “chiefs are 2-0 as swifties,” and it also temporarily used “NFL (Taylor’s Version)” as its bio on X (Twitter) according to The Washington Post.
The NFL quickly removed the line from their Instagram. Now, it’s just a blank space. The NFL X account also posted after the Chiefs beat the New York Jets on Sunday night, “The @Chiefs are now 2-0 with @TaylorSwift13 in attendance,” while tagging the Next Gen Stats account, after the Chiefs defeated the Jets, 23-20, at MetLife Stadium with Swift in attendance.
The fans on the platform did not appreciate the Swift elements of the tweet. They felt they were unnecessary after a close game with some questionable calls that favored the Chiefs. The penalties against the Jets allowed the Chiefs to run out the clock and win the game.
According to The Athletic, The NBC broadcast cut to Swift 17 times. Last weekend, Fox made sure to capitalize on her Arrowhead Stadium appearance too.
The NFL tried implementing the crossover between sports and pop culture into its social media accounts. It did not work. They quickly pivoted back to a more general presence.
Fun fact, Taylor Swift’s target audience for her music is not the NFL’s target audience for their games. If the NFL wants to attract Swift’s fans to the game, then they will have to do it in a more subtle way.
Their current, and rather large, fan base does not want to miss plays and other aspects of the game because they keep cutting to a celebrity they do not care about.
Tony Katz went more in depth on this topic during his show today. Click the link for Tony’s full thoughts on Swift’s invasion of the NFL.
