In 2023, Taylor Swift began a relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. After that, Kansas City Chiefs broadcasts seemed increasingly eager to cut to shots of Taylor Swift in the corporate boxes, rather than fans in the stands. The NFL was clearly trying to appeal to Swift's fans, but did it work? In a new article published in the Journal of Sports Economics (sorry, I don't see an ungated version online), Kerianne Rubenstein (Syracuse University) and Frank Stephenson (Berry College) show that it did.
Rubenstein and Stephenson collated data on 247 NFL games played in the 2022 and 2023 seasons, noting that the first Chiefs game that Taylor Swift attended was in the third week of the 2023 season. They apply a difference-in-differences analysis, comparing the difference in TV ratings between before and after Week 3 of 2023 for the Chiefs, with before and after Week 3 of 2023 for other teams, while controlling for other variables expected to affect TV ratings. In other words, Rubenstein and Stephenson check whether the Chiefs' TV ratings increased by more than the average before-and-after change that other teams experienced. They find that:
...Chiefs’ games after Taylor Swift started attending see an increase of 2.15 ratings points, which is an approximately 32% increase relative to the mean Nielsen rating... total viewership increased by about 4.8 million after Taylor Swift started attending Chiefs’ games.
So, it appears that Taylor Swift did increase TV ratings for the Kansas City Chiefs. Good news for the Chiefs (and for other NFL teams, who share in the broadcast revenue). Interestingly, and to be expected given Swift's young fan base, the effect was even larger on TV viewership among those aged 18-34 years, with a 40.1 percent increase in TV rating.
An important question, though, is whether Swift attracted new fans, and whether they stuck around. In terms of the former, Rubenstein and Stephenson find some evidence that games played at the same time as Chiefs games suffered a decrease in TV ratings (although that analysis is based on a sample of only ten games, which limits how much we can take from it). However, they also find an increase in TV ratings when the Chiefs game was the only game in its timeslot. So, while there was some substitution between NFL games, new fans were also attracted to watch. And, they did stick around - Rubenstein and Stephenson find limited evidence that the effect declined over time, with Chiefs games later in 2023 having a similar TV rating as those earlier in the season (it is worth noting that the Chiefs had a particularly good 2023 season though, finishing the regular season 11-6, winning their division, and ultimately winning Super Bowl LVIII).
Celebrities are a common feature of sports games. Rubenstein and Stephenson note the example of the Atlanta Hawks, who make courtside seats available to celebrities with large social media followings in the hopes of increasing game attendance and TV ratings. Not every celebrity has the profile of Taylor Swift. However, the results in this study suggest that the Hawks' strategy might be a sensible strategy for increasing the profile of games. The NFL should take notice. Certainly, this would make much more sense than, as some conspiracy theorists would have you believe, biasing the officiating in favour of particular teams (like the Chiefs). So, leaving conspiracies aside, what we learn from this paper is that celebrity appearances at games can increase demand. That seems to be exactly what happened here, with Taylor Swift’s presence helping to increase the audience for Kansas City Chiefs games.
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