Taylor Swift brings a billion dollars of publicity to NFL, according to marketing firm
Taylor Swift brings a billion dollars of publicity to NFL, according to marketing firm
Taylor Swift may not be on the NFL payroll or have official football merchandise, but the singer is responsible for bringing a billion dollars' worth of publicity to the sport, according to Apex Marketing.
The official number is $992,361,912.
Apex Marketing — a 10-year-old firm that provides sponsorship and brand analytics for entertainment and sports venue owners and commercial brands — calculated the billion dollar value by tracking how much Swift was mentioned in the same breath as the NFL. That includes in newspapers, radio stations, television broadcasts and social media posts.
"This is just media buzz," says Eric Smallwood, president of Apex. "If you were a brand and you wanted to go and buy media for your product or service, you would have to spend this amount to garner this level of media exposure."
Apex studied the media's spotlight on the singer starting with her game day debut on Sept. 24, 2023, when she shocked fans by cheering from an Arrowhead Stadium suite.
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"At the time, her concert tour was constantly in the news," Smallwood says. "When she crossed into the world of the NFL and football, a non-Swiftie environment, it cross-pollinated these two entities of sports and entertainment."
The timing of the Eras Tour amplified Swift's already blinding media exposure. Articles on whether she would make the trek from her Tokyo concert to the Super Bowl in 2024 saw traffic spikes.
Following that game, the superstar brought her record-shattering concert, sometimes with boyfriend in tow, to stops in Asia, Australia and Europe. At every city, handfuls of her concertgoers sported Chiefs merchandise, especially Travis Kelce jerseys.
"And it just blows up from there," Smallwood says. "An entity reached out to our company and said, 'What's the value from this period of time?'"
His company followed the "Love Story" through this February, with interest heightening around whether Swift would attend the Super Bowl matchup between the Chiefs and Eagles.
She did, and the NFL showed her on the broadcast for 10 seconds, exciting Swifties tuned into the broadcast globally and inciting Eagles fans to boo her.
Either way, the singer was a topic of conversation in the days following the big game.
The Taylor Swift effect? NFL says women make up almost half of audience.
"The booing became a discussion that kept the conversation going," Smallwood says. "We've been following the media every day and not just domestically, but internationally. With her, we're seeing a lot of international interest."
Media articles may have waned in the past two weeks, but interest lingers as fans wait to see whether Kelce will return to the NFL next year.
Don't miss any Taylor Swift news; sign up for the free, weekly newsletter This Swift Beat.
Follow Bryan West, the USA TODAY Network's Taylor Swift reporter, on Instagram, TikTok and X as @BryanWestTV.
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