- Swift’s relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce has led to tons of sign ups for the sport
- The singer tripled Kansas City Chiefs ticket sales after going public with her relationship with the Super Bowl winner
- Swifties are now taking up Flag Football as a pastime in universities across the UK
Not content with simply being the most famous person on the face of the planet, in the midst of a record breaking world tour, not far removed from releasing the most heavily discussed and dissected album of the year, it appears Taylor Swift is now triggering a rise in the popularity of the NFL across UK universities, thanks to her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce.
Swift and Kelce’s relationship began during last season in the NFL, a campaign which saw the Chiefs’ tight end lift his third Super Bowl. And while Kelce was continuing to cement his legacy on the field, off it his work was influencing women across the United Kingdom to study him on TikTok, immersing themselves in his stats and joining flag football teams.
Speaking to The Times, 20-year-old liberal arts student Isobel Gardner revealed how Swift’s first publicised visit to a Chiefs game, on September 24, 2023, convinced her to join the University of Nottingham’s flag football team, before becoming its publicity secretary and competing in an international competition in the Netherlands and teaching the sport in local primary schools.
“I wouldn’t say I started playing solely because of Taylor,” Isobel explains, “but I saw the first game she attended, on September 24, and so it was quite big news at the beginning of term. Then I went to Freshers Fair and saw American football – or flag football – and I was like, ‘oh my gosh’, I’ve recently learnt about that because I was watching all these TikToks on who Travis Kelce was and his stats and everything.”
Flag football is a faster, non-contact version of the game seen in the NFL, in which tackles are made by pulling flags off players’ belts. Each team has five players and will feature for the first time in the Olympics at the 2028 games in Los Angeles.
The American football club, which recently appointed it’s first female president, saw a 400 per cent increase in players between September 2023 and 2024. William Newstead, a 21-year-old who represents Reading Knights American football team, said of the phenomenon, “The first major sign I saw was in the crowd of home games. We managed to get a lot more people than expected, which was a very nice surprise. A few people at the game said, ‘we heard about it through Taylor Swift dating Travis Kelce and wanted to see what it was about’.”
British University & Colleges Sport (Bucs) currently only hosts contact American football leagues, but is looking into hosting a flag competition for the 2025/26 season. A regional flag league in London that was opened by Bucs last season had to turn teams away because it was oversubscribed, according to The Times.
Swift, meanwhile, is currently gearing up to drop jaws in the UK once again, as she begins a five night residency at Wembley Stadium on August 15 (Thursday).
