Taylor Swift on why it’s important to her to be at Chiefs games, even if it upsets fans

When Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce first began dating superstar singer Taylor Swift, there was talk that each side was simply trying to boost their careers.

That seems odd considering Kelce is a two-time Super Bowl champion and one of the best tight ends of all-time. And Swift is a billionaire, who also is one of the most famous people on the planet.

Another sign of Swift’s popularity came Wednesday morning when Time magazine named its 2023 Person of the Year.

In the magazine’s cover story, author Sam Lansky mentioned Swift’s romance with Kelce, and its effect on the NFL.

“When Swift started dating Travis Kelce,” Lansky wrote, “the Kansas City Chief and two-time Super Bowl champion, his games saw a massive increase in viewership. (Yes, she somehow made one of America’s most popular things — football — even more popular.)“

Swift has appeared at five Chiefs games this season, and network cameras have been trained on her. That’s rankled many fans who think the attention should be solely on football rather than see images of Swift in Chiefs red or hear the announcers make note of her presence at the game.

But here’s the thing: Swift told Time magazine she’s not sure how those camera operators find her at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

“I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in,” Swift told Time. “There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the-camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.”

Swift added she’s aware of the backlash from some football fans, but is not asking to be shown during a broadcast.

And she noted the reason she’s there: to show encouragement for Kelce.

“I’m just there to support Travis,” she says. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”

Oh, and guess what? Swift really likes football.

“Football is awesome, it turns out,” Swift playfully said in the article. “I’ve been missing out my whole life.”

‘We’re showing up for each other’

This romance began with a rejection.

Kelce recounted on his “New Heights” podcast that he had tried to meet Swift at one of her shows at Arrowhead Stadium but she didn’t talk much before a concert. However, someone played “Cupid,” as Kelce noted, and apparently told Swift about his public admission of trying to meet her.

She loved it.

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” Swift told Time. “We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other.

“By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”

That first game was Sept. 24 when the Chiefs played host to the Chicago Bears. She has since been to four other games, and Kelce flew to South America last month to see her perform during her New Eras tour.

Swift said that going to Chiefs games is important to her because she is not trying to hide her affection for Kelce.

“When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” Swift told Time. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”

Here is the story on Swift being named Time’s Person of the Year.