Is having Taylor Swift on your team worth more than winning the Super Bowl?

Nearly halfway into the NFL regular season, Kansas City Chiefs are comfortably winning the Buzz battle in the US. At an average of 18 points since the start of the season, they are comfortably above second placed San Francisco 49ers at 12.2 points.

Other NFL teams that have maintained a Buzz score of over 10 points since the start of the season on September 9th include the Miami Dolphins (11.9) and Philadelphia Eagles (11.7). To put the Chiefs’ Buzz score in additional context, it is worth noting that during the length of the previous season, the team averaged 12.8 – this even though they won the Super Bowl.

While the Chiefs have certainly performed well with six wins and just two losses, five other teams across the American Football Conference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC) have performed at least as well. Our data suggests that Chiefs’ special Buzz boost may be an outcome of the much-publicized Travis Kelce – Taylor Swift relationship.

Since the pop music sensation was first spotted at a Chiefs game on September 24 amid rumors of a relationship with Kelce, Kansas’ scores – based on a four-week moving average – have risen from an already impressive 11.3 to 20.7 as of October 29.

Among those who rate Taylor Swift positively, scores for Kansas City (based on an eight-week moving average) stand at 20.3, lending support to the theory that fans of Swift may be contributing to Kansas’ high-Buzz season.

We’ve previously published an article looking into the overlap in the fandom of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce fans, with data suggesting that Swift fans were more likely to be Chiefs fans even before the duo got together. 

Explore our living data – for free

Discover more sports content here

Want to run your own research? Run a survey now

Make smarter business decisions with better intelligence. Understand exactly what your audience is thinking by leveraging our panel of 20 million+ members. Speak with us today.