This year’s Super Bowl mashup between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers had lots of buzz following it. Most of it is the usual talk of who won, what the score was, how the halftime performance went, etc. But this year the women surrounding the Super Bowl might be more interesting and affect the event more than the game itself!
By now it is very well known that global popstar Taylor Swift and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce are a couple. Their romance started over the summer when Kelce attended one of Swift’s concerts in July 2023 as a part of her “Era’s Tour”. He mentioned on his podcast, “New Heights”, that he hosts with his brother Jason Kelce, that he attended her concert and he wanted to get her number. This started a media frenzy and soon there were reports of the two getting together. Then in September 2023, Taylor started to attend the Chiefs’ games, confirming the rumors of the pair being together. All over the media there have been conflicting opinions. The NFL and broadcast networks took advantage of the opportunity to capitalize off Taylor. They would show her during the broadcasts to try and engage a new fan base of Swifties. However, these short flashes of her during the game began to cause many people (mainly men) to be upset since they want to just watch football and not watch her. One angry viewer wrote, “The wall-to-wall coverage of Taylor Swift at this game is annoying AF. I don’t even like football and I agree it’s destroying football”. Other people online have also agreed that she is “ruining football”. Fans have booed when she’s been shown or entered stadiums. But in reality during the three hour long broadcasts, the longest Swift had ever been shown was around 35 seconds and at one game it was only 12 seconds. On the flipside to the negative opinions, research done by Apex Marketing Group shows that Swift has made the NFL and the Chiefs $331.5 million, from print, digital radio, social media mentioning her and TV highlights. She also helped the NFL reach their highest regular-season viewership since 2000 when they began tracking numbers. In addition, she inspired a Super Bowl commercial this year that exemplified how her presence at games has helped girls become more interested in football and how it brings many fathers and daughters together. So even though she has raised many mixed opinions she has helped the NFL in ways many players could not.
Another woman who is stealing the spotlight is Kristin Juszczyk. She is married to Kyle Juszczyk who is one of the 49ers fullbacks. Kristin gained most of her popularity on social media this season for her reworking of 49ers apparel, but she’s been doing this for the past five seasons. She would take her husband’s jerseys or any 49ers apparel and rework it into trendy pieces of clothing like corset tops, vests, jackets and more. Kristin started doing design when her husband signed with the 49ers. She had formerly been in real estate but gave it up in hopes of pursuing her dream. She’s reworked apparel for other wives and girlfriends of players like Taylor Swift, Simone Biles and Brittany Mahomes. In addition, she also made a custom Lions coat for Taylor Lautner, a famous actor, friend and former ex of Taylor Swift. Juszczyk was recently granted a license that allows her to use the NFL logo in her designs, which allows her to use a wider range of clothing items. According to Front Office Sports, in one month Juszczyk surpassed 1 million followers on Instagram, appeared on The Today Show, and acquired deals with Invisalign and Gatorade just to name a few. She also sold custom Super Bowl puffer vests that were up for auction and donated the proceeds to the National Breast Cancer Foundation in honor of her mom who passed away when Juszczyk was 18. She sold her first custom vest for $75,000 and even crashed the website.
Front Office Sports shared how this year’s Super Bowl viewership was up 7.4% from last year with a total of 123.4 million people tuning in. They also shared how there has been a 24% jump in viewership among girls 18-24 and a 11% jump in viewership among girls 12-17. In addition, 47.5% of the Super Bowl’s viewers were women, which is the highest it’s been, probably thanks to these two women.