There’s a non-zero percent chance that Travis Kelce has made Taylor Swift a mixtape with “The Boys Are Back in Town” on it. Once the exchange of friendship bracelets is out of the way, crafting a music playlist is the next logical step in the crush playbook, especially if you’re 34 years old and looking to fast-track a sort of high-school-sweethearts-but-with-tons-of-money emotional connection.
Now, as a means of wooing a world-famous pop star who traffics in what certain online forums characterize as “Girl Power vibes,” the hypothetical inclusion of Thin Lizzy’s 1976 bro anthem may seem a bit tone deaf. Understandable. But we’re talking about Travis Kelce here; judging from the hype tracks he shared with Apple Music, his brother Jason likely had to talk him out of regaling his special new friend with AC/DC’s “Big Balls.”
It all worked out in the end, and while Taylor probably fast-forwards through the Team America: World Police theme song, the unlikely union of the football hero and the pop princess serves as a pretty nifty metaphor for the NFL’s globe-gobbling hegemony. Representing what amounts to the last stand for the American monoculture, the league that couldn’t conceivably get any bigger did just that in 2023-24, and the evidence was splashed all over the Super Bowl TV numbers.
If the much ballyhooed “Taylor Swift effect” was largely overstated during the regular season, the Nielsen data for Super Bowl LVIII would seem to indicate that Kelce’s paramour helped CBS grow its female audience segments. While she garnered just 54 seconds of total airtime over the course of the broadcast, Swift’s occupation of the Allegiant Stadium luxury box coincided with significant gains with female viewers, with ‘tweens and young adults accounting for some of the biggest ratings spikes.
Bearing in mind that the 58th installment of the Super Bowl averaged a record 123.7 million viewers, good for a 7% increase versus last year’s short-lived high, this year’s demo counts were nothing short of remarkable. When viewed through the rate-of-change lens, no group showed a bigger year-over-year jump than women 18-24. Per Nielsen, some 3.95 million members of that hard-to-reach band tuned in to the Niners-Chiefs nail-biter, which marked a 24% boost compared to last year’s tally (3.18 million). Their male counterparts also surged, expanding 20% to 4.61 million viewers, good for a net gain of 753,000. It’s worth noting that adults 18-24 in the U.S. watch less TV than any other age group; at a mere 51 minutes of tube time per day, their usage has fallen 25% in just the last four years.
Also showing up for Sunday were girls in the 12-17 demo, who were up 11% versus 2023 to 2.91 million, while the boys were up 6%. A similar dynamic held sway among the much larger 18-49 demos, as adult women under 50 increased 8% to just over 23 million viewers, while men in the same range were up 4% to 25.5 million. Moms and grammas also were not to be denied, as women 35-64 grew 7% to 26.3 million, a big boost compared to the relatively muted 3% lift on the other side of the gender divide (29 million).
All told, girls and women accounted for a record 47.5% of the Super Bowl audience, as 5 million more females watched this year’s game than was the case a year ago. The gap between men and women narrowed to just 6.14 million viewers, which was down from the 7.53 million-person deficit recorded during Super Bowl LVII.
Out-of-home deliveries were one of the few variables that remained more or less static, as 21% of those who tuned in did so from within the friendly confines of a bar, restaurant or someone else’s living room. OOH in 2023 accounted for 21.7% of all Super Bowl impressions, and while both numbers were well ahead of the NFL’s regular-season average (13%), the gold standard for non-traditional deliveries remains the Commanders-Cowboys Thanksgiving game (41%).
If a good chunk of those who tune in to the Super Bowl each year may be charitably characterized as “casual fans”—it is perhaps more accurate to say that tens of millions of those who suit up for the rituals of Super Sunday don’t watch much, if any, NFL action during the other 364 days of the year—it doesn’t take a data scientist to see that the league’s title showcase represents what amounts to the America’s last true pop-culture phenomenon.
The atomization of the entertainment space has put an end to the massive, put-everything-on-hold series finales of yesteryear—you’re only going to do Friends finale numbers if 30 million people watch your show every week, and that’s not ever going to happen again—but the Super Bowl is sui generis, an anomaly that confounds and contradicts everything we know about 21st century media consumption.
As much as the Super Bowl’s big-tent phenomenon is an extreme outlier, the big uptick in female viewers is no accident. Yes, the outsized presence of curiosity seekers and partygoers may skew the gender proportions by quite a bit—the NFL’s roster of casual fans is arguably larger than other leagues’ total rooting interests—the fact that women make up 36% of the NFL’s regular-season TV audience demonstrates that the league’s comprehensive outreach strategy is working. (According to Nielsen, women’s interest in the NFL has grown 7% since 2021.)
It doesn’t get as much attention as it probably deserves, but the league’s flag football push is a phenomenon unto itself. Girls and young women have been particularly receptive to the no-contact wrinkle, and new leagues are cropping up across the country like so many Travis-yelling-at-Andy memes. According to the NFL, 474,000 young women between the ages of 6 and 17 played flag football last year, an increase of 63% versus 2019. Eight states, including coastal colossi such as California and New York, have sanctioned girls’ flag football as a varsity sport at the high school level, and nearly 30 NAIA colleges have embraced the game.
The pink-washing charges that once dogged the NFL’s marketing efforts have largely gone the way of the barefoot placekicker, and savvy advertisers have rewarded the league’s network partners with their custom. Dove’s Super Bowl spot, a paean to body-positivity that encouraged young female athletes to keep at it (45% of girls quit organized sports by age 14), was one of a handful of in-game ads targeting daughters and sisters.
While it’s tempting to say that these brands were targeting the Swifties in the audience, the various campaigns were in the works well before Travis and Taylor found themselves sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Certainly none of the CMOs who’d OK’d their $7 million Big Game buys could expect to last at their jobs if they weren’t confident that their messages would be seen by a massive crowd of girls and women; in fact, this year’s turnout was three times the size of the total Academy Awards audience in 2023.
Only time will tell if a jubilant jabroni with godawful taste in music can make it work with one of the most successful singer-songwriters of her generation, but the NFL’s popularity among women of all ages transcends Sunday’s fairy-tale ending. (Also: Stop calling it that. A fairy-tale ending is when a wolf eats your grandmother and then starts wearing her clothes, not when you smooch a lady billionaire in front of your mom and 123 million other people.)
Even if things go south and next season finds Travis moodily pumping Deion Sanders’ “Must Be the Money” from the stereo of his RAV4, while Taylor gets cracking on a devastating breakup ballad (“I Knew You Were Bad News When You Yelled at Coach Andy”), the NFL isn’t going to feel much more than a twinge of passing heartbreak.
