Some people plan to spend more on football this year—because of Taylor Swift

The NFL season kicks off tonight with a match between the Baltimore Ravens and reigning Super Bowl champs, the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s the moment hordes of hardcore football fans have been waiting for ever since the Big Game aired back in February. It’s also a highly anticipated moment for another faction of more recent gridiron converts—fans of Taylor Swift.

Ever since the pop superstar began dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce in 2022, an unlikely abundance of new fans have flocked to the NFL for the first time. By now, excitement for football games has become a feeling that Swifties know all too well. In fact, according to data from a recent survey, Swift is not only steering more attention to the NFL this season, she’s also driving her fans’ spending habits in that direction too.

In a survey conducted by online lending marketplace Lending Tree, 17% of Americans claimed to be more interested in football this season thanks to Swift—and 14% said they’ll spend more on football this season because of her. With input from more than 2,000 Americans, the survey suggests that the money will be spent on either game tickets (19%), tailgating and drinks (23%), or merch (26%). That last intention should be no surprise, considering that sales of Kelce’s jersey jumped 400% after Swift’s first appearance at a Chiefs game early last season—not to mention all the unofficial “Traylor” merch decked out with slogans like “Karma is the Guy on the Chiefs,” which appeared to do brisk business on Etsy.

Taylor Swift’s impact on the NFL has already been profound. The league capped off a season-long practice of regularly cutting to reaction shots from the star, who attended most games, with a Super Bowl that ended up being the most-watched telecast of all time, reaching 123.7 million viewers. After the season ended, 64% of Gen Z and millennial women claimed to hold a favorable view of the NFL, an all-time high in Morning Consult tracking among that demo. The link between the league and Swift has since remained so strong, pretty much every cultural story related to the Chiefs in recent months ends up getting filtered through a Swiftian prism.

This survey is just the latest sign that all the attention will continue as long as the relationship does. For its part, the NFL seems rather pleased with this arrangement. In a recent promo video hyping the 2024-2025 season, Swift has more screen time than any actual football player.

FOOTBALL IS BACK THIS WEEK 🏈 🚨 pic.twitter.com/YVR8kbZnfm— NFL (@NFL) September 2, 2024

FOOTBALL IS BACK THIS WEEK 🏈 🚨 pic.twitter.com/YVR8kbZnfm

Of course, the relationship between some football fans and Swift is anything but a love story.

Lending further credence to Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion—that every action has an equal and opposite reaction—just as 17% of Americans claim to be more interested in football this season thanks to Swift, another 17% claim to have less interest in watching football this season due to her association with all things football. In fact, according to the survey, 44% of respondents would go so far as to say they hate what Taylor Swift has done to the NFL. (To be clear: All Swift has done is attend her partner’s games while wearing cute outfits. Everything else that’s followed has come courtesy of the attention economy.)

It seems only fitting, though, that the songstress’s outsize influence on the game would be so polarizing. After all, football is a sport that is fueled by bad blood. But unless those aggrieved fans are planning to protest this season by boycotting all games, which is rather unlikely, they’ll simply have to make like a running back after a nasty tackle and shake it off.