Arrie Flathouse took his first steps listening to Taylor Swift’s hit song “Tim McGraw.”
The pop icon was a constant part of the now 16-year-old Arrie’s childhood, growing up in the Houston area with two older sisters who adored Swift. Arrie also grew to love Swift, dressing up as her for Halloween and listening to her albums.

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Arrie was never much into football, despite having a mom, Kara, who spent weekends tuning in to college and NFL games. This included games played by the Chiefs as Kara, like Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes, is a Texas Tech alumnus. Despite Kara’s attempts to interest her daughters, soccer never worked out for Arrie, so she Kara usually spent weekend afternoons watching games alone.
But that changed last summer after Arrie saw clips from the “New Heights” podcast, in which one of the hosts, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, described his attempts to give Swift his number via a friendship bracelet.
Does anyone know how to get a bracelet @taylorswift13? …I’m asking for a friend 😅 @BWWings
The new episode premieres NOW!
Tap: pic.twitter.com/4yYr8HSb0m
— New Heights (@newheightshow) July 26, 2023
The little exchange had a major impact on Arrie.
Already a devoted listener of the podcast, Kara got very excited when her daughter started talking about Kelce’s clips. In the months that followed, social media worked its magic, and when Swift showed up at her first Chiefs game in late September, Arrie was tuned in.
“This is crazy,” Arrie said. “This is not the Swifties theory. This is true. So that’s when I started watching football because I thought, ‘If she’s going to be at the games, I have to see her.’”
Arrie has tuned into virtually every Chiefs game since then, embracing not only the romance between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, but the entire Kelce family. She watched the Amazon Prime documentary about her brother, Eagles center Jason Kelce, became a devoted listener of the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights” podcast and even started watching Eagles games.
“Even though Taylor isn’t there, I think I enjoy (the game) a lot more,” said Arrie, whose parents have promised to buy her a Travis Kelce jersey soon.

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Kara smiles as she listens to her daughter describe her newfound interest in a sport she bonded over with her father. She doesn’t want to push too hard, but she likes it when she sees Arrie’s head pop over the stair railing if she hears football on TV. Much to Kara’s delight, this tends to lead to them spending quality time together watching games with her daughter. It also led to questions about the sport itself.
“It was really fun for me,” said Kara, who in the fall posted a viral video about her joy that Swift had finally converted her daughter into a soccer fan. “I love it.”
The Flathouse family is not an anomaly. Away from it. Swift’s arrival on the soccer stage led to countless stories of soccer-loving parents bonding with their Swiftie children. Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt is listening, too.
“My dads often come to me and say, ‘My 10- and 12-year-old daughters never watched football, but now they tell me every time the Kansas City Chiefs play to tell them so they can watch it,’” Hunt said this week in Las Vegas, where the Chiefs are preparing to face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII. “I was at a party a little over a week ago and I had a woman, probably in her mid-twenties, who is came to me, introduced herself as a Swiftie and told me that her whole family are Dallas Cowboys fans and that she used to not follow football at all, but now she’s all in with the Kansas City Chiefs. I think there are many examples like that out there.
A similar story belongs to Todd Kale, a Cowboys fan who posted a now-viral video of his 11-year-old daughter Briley reciting football facts from the couch.
The Kale family lives near Houston. They are season ticket holders for the Cowboys and their five daughters love going to games. They know the great Dallas players but have never actually watched the game with their dad, instead embracing the atmosphere of a game day or simply enjoying eating hot wings, their Sunday ritual, rather than engaging much in actual football .
But Briley, the middle child of the family, became a Swift fan thanks to her older sisters and passed the love of Swift on to her younger siblings. Todd wasn’t sure how Briley first learned of Swift’s connection to Kelce, but a few months ago, he was watching a Sunday night game with his wife and realized Briley was in the living room. He started asking questions: What is a security? What is a cornerback? How many points is a touchdown worth?
It didn’t take long for Todd to understand where all this was coming from.
“It definitely intrigued her that someone she really likes is now involved in something I really like,” Todd said.
Since then, Briley has watched more Chiefs games and has gained knowledge about the sport itself, absorbing it all.
“It’s every dad’s dream. …She liked soccer before, but I think she just liked the experience,” Todd said. “Now she’s learning more about the game.”

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Swift has been a storyline all season — with Kansas City winning nine of the 12 games he’s appeared in — and the Chiefs’ Super Bowl run has only taken it to a higher level.
“There’s no question that her being a fan has put a more intense focus on the team than we otherwise would have,” Hunt said. “She opened up the fan base to a whole new demographic that we didn’t really have among young women. You’ve seen it in many ways, particularly in our television ratings. “They are much higher because Taylor Swift is part of the team, as Kelce says.”
Hunt isn’t wrong about TV ratings. Not only has the average number of viewers tuning into prime-time Chiefs regular season games increased this season compared to the previous two (a 39.4% jump from just last year), but so has the percentage of viewers women (increasing by 3%). , according to Nielsen. And that jump in viewership carried over to the postseason. The Chiefs’ divisional round win over Buffalo averaged 50.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched divisional round or wild-card game ever. The Chiefs’ win over the Ravens was the most-watched AFC Championship game ever, with an average of 55.47 million viewers tuning in.
Taylor Swift generated an equivalent brand value of $331.5 million for the Chiefs and the NFL, Apex Marketing Group tells FOS.
The figure includes print, digital, radio, TV, highlights and social media starting with Swift’s first game in September. pic.twitter.com/Ruj5FM7g81
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) January 28, 2024
The league’s social media team also played an important role in introducing new audiences. The team embraced Swift’s first game in September, trying to be aware of all the new eyes on their feeds without going overboard, said Ian Trombetta, the NFL’s SVP of social and influencer marketing.
This theme has remained consistent throughout the season, although the strategy varies depending on the platform, Trombetta said. With some of those being younger, like TikTok and Snapchat, there’s even more reason to embrace Swifties with their posts.
“We’re also thinking about this in the sense of not only what we post on social media, but also how our partners cover it,” Trombetta said. “So it could be a TV partner. It could be a sponsor, etc. And when you take all of this in its entirety, it can get pretty, pretty hot just in terms of the amount of coverage. And, so for us, I think it was really a reminder to take a broader view of all the coverage and understand our role in it.

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Swift’s emergence on the NFL scene has helped lead to record-breaking engagement, with triple-digit growth in consumption across various platforms, according to Trombetta. Their audience continues to be younger and more diverse in the men’s/women’s division as well, she said.
Swift’s presence at the Super Bowl is in the air thanks to the Eras Tour stop in Tokyo. If Swift is there to watch Kelce’s Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49ers, the league’s social team will spend some time on his arrival and his reactions, but with so much going on around the Super Bowl between football and show, it won’t just be Taylor Swift’s social feed.
“I think we’ve gotten to the point now, that overall, it’s been a very celebratory thing,” Trombetta said. “And certainly good for the league, good for the Chiefs, good for the Kelce family, and obviously with Travis, and I think it was good for Taylor as well. So we’ll continue to read it in different ways, but we’ll also be respectful of their relationship. So don’t invade privacy and try to take a cue from where some lines might be on the amount of coverage and also keep the game front and center. This is really important to us.
However, there is no doubt that the league has attracted new fans thanks to Swift, as the Flathouse and Kale families can test.
The Flathouse family will host an “I’m in My Super Bowl Era” themed party on Sunday in honor of the Chiefs-Swift crossover.
There will be a giant friendship bracelet garland along with appropriately themed food and drinks, including an “electric” mocktail, honoring a word Kelce is very fond of wearing.
But what about next season, when Swift’s magic may have run its course? It doesn’t matter to Arrie, who plans to continue tuning in to NFL games.
“I feel like I’m hooked now,” Arrie said.
—AtleticoNate Taylor contributed to this report.
(Photo illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / Atletico;
Photo: Jamie Squire, Patrick Smith and Sarah Stier / Getty Images)