KANSAS CITY, Mo. — We've heard so much about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift but we've also seen measurable impact like a spike in Travis Kelce jersey sales, to a spike in viewers for last Sunday's Chiefs game against the Jets when Swift was there.
NBC Sports reported it was the most watched Sunday game since the Super Bowl and drew the largest streaming audience ever for a regular season game. We've even seen local businesses creating and selling merchandise related to the pair.
I reached out to Jordan Pellerito, a doctoral candidate who co-teaches an honors course at the University of Missouri that teaches history and literature using Taylor Swift. You can read more about the course online.
I asked Pellerito about why this has become such a pop culture moment. She said she wasn't entirely surprised because these are two fan bases that share some similarities.
"Fans, I think, pretty famously spent a ton of money to go to this show, and they travel to go see her, and they bought new outfits, or they bought a lot of merchandise," she said referencing the success surrounding Swift's Eras Tour that stopped by Kansas City earlier this summer.
"And sports fans do that as well. They may not spend as much money as frequently as they do with Taylor Swift, but they're still spending money to go to Super Bowl games or playoff games, or even just your average Sunday or Monday night game, and they're buying merchandise.
"They have an invested interest in who's playing and how well they're doing," she added. "I think there's a lot of common ground that maybe the Taylor Swift Fans and NFL or Chiefs fans just didn't really think much about before the past few weeks."
