Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce: The All-American Romance Taking the World by Storm

She’s just won best album at the Grammys; he may well win the Super Bowl. Is their romance a political conspiracy, money-making enterprise or just as simple as true love?

Even among modern pop armies, Taylor Swift fans stand out for their devotion to their idol. But in the past year they’ve surpassed themselves, flocking to stadiums for the Eras tour, to cinemas for the concert movie, and often both, multiple times. Now the Swifties are tuning in to the NFL, getting behind her new boyfriend Travis Kelce, the tight end for the Chiefs.

Since their romance last summer, Swift has become a fixture of the Chiefs’ games this season, often spotted in the box with Kelce’s family, and drawing fans to the field in their droves. Now speculation over their relationship is at such fever pitch, there’s been talk of a proposal at the Super Bowl on Sunday, when the Chiefs play the San Francisco 49ers. Swift is set to fly from Tokyo to attend.

While her previous relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn was remarkable for its privacy, Swift and Kelce’s relationship has played out in public. Attending Swift’s Kansas City show in July, Kelce tried and failed to pass his number to her backstage, joking that he was “throwing the ball in her court”. Swift duly caught wind of it. In October, weeks after Swift’s appearance at a Chiefs game, Kelce bought a $6m mansion in a gated community in Missouri, believed to give them greater privacy.

A month later, he went to see Swift perform in Buenos Aires – and she took to Karma to shout out her “guy on the Chiefs”. She was filmed later running off the stage and into his arms.

We have seen more of Swift in the past six months with Kelce than we did in her six years with Alwyn – and she and Kelce have become one of the most famous couples in the US, if not the world.

The attention on them stretches far beyond their respective fandoms, highlighting our enduring obsession with romance and celebrity couples to pin it to. But in this age of 24/7 social-media surveillance, many have either lost their sheen or taken cover. It’s telling that companies have had to lean on past loves for their much-hyped Super Bowl commercials, with Uber featuring Ross and Rachel from Friends.

Like Posh and Becks, another of the last great celebrity love stories, Swift and Kelce invoke an instantly recognizable narrative – of the overachieving homecoming queen and the football hero with a heart of gold.

Kelce’s Instagram posts paint a wholesome picture of simple pleasures, among them feeding squirrels and karaoke. Swift, too, is known by fans to be a dork at heart.

As a couple, Swift and Kelce are easy to root for: both 34 (a respectable age), at the top of their respective games, and – of course – conventionally attractive and white. With the global sports and entertainment industries aligned behind them, they seem unstoppable.

It’s perhaps no surprise that conspiracy theorists are claiming that the romance is political propaganda, staged to swing a win for Biden – a theory labeled by the New York Times as “the silliest possible conspiracy theory”.

According to the gossip columnist Lainey Gossip, it’s almost an unnervingly perfect union. “It feels like a glitch in the matrix, a one-in-a-trillion chance, that the woman who just won album of the year at the Grammys is dating the guy about to win the Super Bowl.”

Their fans, at least, are buying it – and quite literally. In terms of brand awareness, based on social media posts and press coverage, Swift’s relationship is estimated to have boosted the Chiefs’ profile by a reach worth $331m, as well as a surge in sponsorship.

Meanwhile, the number of young women following this NFL season has soared by 88% for a single Chiefs game. Swift, Harris claims, has achieved the seemingly impossible, and “made the NFL even bigger”.

It is prime evidence of the “Taylor Swift effect”, seeing the pop star talked about in terms usually reserved for corporations, if not countries. Last November, Beyoncé, along with Taylor Swift, was credited with a better-than-expected 5% boost to US GDP. The Eras tour is already the biggest in history, generating $1bn in revenue with nearly a year yet to go.

Kelce is similarly ambitious, having signed with a management agency when he was younger for a shot at being “as famous as The Rock”.

At the end of her banner year, Swift’s romance has repositioned her in the public consciousness from the all-conquering queen of pop, to a young woman in love.

In 2022, Swift faced criticism related to global emissions with her frequent private jet travels. Until Tuesday, when she joined Elon Musk in threatening legal action against the college student publicizing their flights, coverage focused on whether that jet would get her from Tokyo to the US in time to see her boyfriend win the Super Bowl.

Despite all the publicity, Harris doubts that the relationship is just for show. It may have started that way, but “Taylor Swift is already galactically famous without Travis Kelce”, she says. “If anything, this just seems like the quickest way for her to achieve oversaturation.”

Whatever the split between business and pleasure, “Tayvis” is an all-American romance in more ways than one: highly marketable, slightly too sweet, and served in ample portions. It’s telling of a time sorely lacking in romance, let alone fairy tales, that we’re filling our plate and asking for more. As Swift sang, it’s a love story – just say yes.