Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and the NFL—Who Won the Popularity Contest?

2025 readers—we originally published this blog on October 20, 2023, back when rumors about Taylor and Travis were just starting to swirl. Since then, a lot has happened, including an engagement. We’ve updated the data and added a new visual at the end of this post to capture the full story. ‍

Every Taylor Swift release is a marvel of marketing and PR. Whether an indie-folk album surprise-released in the depths of COVID. A short film about a forgotten scarf. Or a tour that’s posted big numbers—projected $1 billion in ticket sales—without losing the tiny, Swiftian touches that make her stadium shows feel intimate. See: the friendship bracelet industry sparked by a single line in one of her songs. Jewelry sales spiked 40 percent at the craft store Michaels, for instance, thanks to fans creating their own for Swift’s Eras Tour.  

Everything Swift creates is carefully designed to be shareable, to sell out, to build hype, to reach peak popularity. But somehow, the Kansas City Chiefs game hullabaloo on September 24, 2023 appeared to rocket even Swift to new heights of popularity—at least in terms of Google Trends.  

(If you somehow missed it, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce invited Taylor Swift to watch his team play the Chicago Bears. Swift wore Chiefs red and cheered next to Kelce’s mom. All of this, of course, sparked rumors of a possible romance.) 

So, what’s going on? We, the humble data nerds at Domo, don’t pretend to know what’s happening in the sparkly lives of celebrities. But we can at least explore what’s happening in the data—and the surprise we found.  

Taylor Swift’s popularity before and after the Chiefs game

Swift surprisingly reached “peak popularity” the week of September 24, 2023, after attending her first Chiefs game. 

First, let’s look at Taylor Swift’s popularity on her own. We will measure popularity using interest over time in Google search patterns. The numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for a given region and time.  

Google Trends reveal Swift's biggest search spikes

Our data starts five years ago. Search interest for the term “Taylor Swift” has tended to peak around her albums and tours. See the spike around the week of August 23, 2019, the day she released "Lover." There’s another in July of 2020, when Swift surprise-dropped "Folklore." On November 12, 2021, she re-released her 2012 album "Red," along with a short film and her first SNL appearance in years. We can see interest peak there, too. 

Until the Chiefs game, Swift’s highest spike in search interest, our proxy for popularity, was the week of November 13, 2022, when Ticketmaster struggled with the US ticket sale of her Eras Tour.  

Swift’s Eras Tour vs the Travis Kelce bump

That drama felt inescapable—until the Chiefs game usurped it. Swift reached peak popularity, a score of 100, when fans spotted her cheering in Kelce’s box. Swift had her highest interest week ever (in our time period), with interest a little more than double even when the Eras Tour was hot.

Travis Kelce: From NFL star to pop culture phenomenon

Travis Kelce—a famous football player made even more famous.

Travis Kelce wasn’t unknown before September 24. He was a third-round pick in the 2013 NFL Draft and has spent 11 years with the Kansas City Chiefs. However, his search interest compared to Swift makes him look that way. His search interest score rarely rose above 1 through the end of 2022. For comparison, Swift’s score in the same timeframe was consistently over 5, even when she’s not actively promoting her music and brand.   

The Super Bowl spotlight

Kelce’s first surge happened around the Super Bowl in February of 2023, when the Chiefs bested the Philadelphia Eagles. A minor media narrative at the time was Kelce playing his brother Jason Kelce, an Eagles center.  

Swift rumors rocket his popularity

Kelce then went back into relative obscurity—at least, “Travis Kelce” wasn’t getting many Google hits. Until the summer of 2023. As he started publicly sharing his interest in Swift, his search interest score rises through September and crescendos on September 24, when Kelce reaches peak popularity—five times the amount of interest he got even when he played in the Super Bowl.  

Taylor vs. Travis: Who really won the popularity contest?

Now, let’s look at Taylor and Travis combined. 

In our time frame, Kelce’s interest score has spiked above hers exactly once: the Super Bowl. Otherwise, Swift rules.  

Can anyone beat the NFL in search?

There’s still one entity that Swift has yet to outperform—the NFL. 

When we include the NFL in our index, at least for search terms, the league is still way bigger than either Swift or Kelce. But hey—we think she and Travis are only getting started.  

Flash forward: The year is 2025, and Travis and Taylor are taking on the world together as an engaged couple. Since we first started tracking them in Google Trends, plenty has happened. Travis and the Chiefs took home a Super Bowl win in 2024, then handed it back in 2025. Meanwhile, Taylor wrapped up the Eras Tour, released two albums, and—because she never lets the internet breathe—got engaged in late summer 2025.

Recap of spikes around Eras Tour, Super Bowl, and engagement news

The data tells the story like only data can. In the chart above, you can spot the headline moments. “Taylor Swift” search interest began to climb again around the 2024 Grammys, when she won her third Album of the Year award for “Midnights.” (The internet promptly debated whether she snubbed Celine Dion and if announcing her next album mid-acceptance speech was icon behavior or chaos.)

Searches for Taylor hit another all-time high during the 2024 Super Bowl, when the Chiefs bested the San Francisco 49ers. Even a year later, the NFL effect is undefeated. No album drop or engagement announcement can compete with the massive visibility Taylor gets when her star collides with the NFL.

We’re wishing Taylor and Travis the best, and we’ll be watching in the data.