There’s a non-zero percent chance that Taylor Swift’s Travis Kelce made a mixtape with “The Boys Are Back in Town” on it. Once the exchanging of friendship bracelets is out of the way, creating a music playlist is the next logical step in the crush playbook, especially if you’re 34 years old and looking for a high school sweetheart-yet-emotional connection with tons of money.
As a means to land a world-famous pop star who trades in what certain online forums characterize as “Girl Power vibes,” the hypothetical recording of Thin Lizzy’s 1976 bro song may seem a little tone-deaf. Understandable. But we’re talking about Travis Kelce here; Judging from the hype tracks he shared with Apple Music, his brother Jason probably had to stop him from treating his special new friend to AC/DC’s “Big Balls.”
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It all worked out in the end, and although Taylor is probably fast forwarding through the Team America: World Police theme song, the unlikely union of the football hero and the pop princess serves as a pretty handy metaphor for the world-eating hegemony of the NFL. Representing what amounts to the last stand for America’s monoculture, the league that couldn’t possibly get any bigger did just that in 2023-2024, and the evidence was spread throughout the Super Bowl TV numbers.
If the much-discussed “Taylor Swift effect” was largely overstated during the regular season, the Nielsen data for Super Bowl LVIII seems to indicate that Kelce’s lover helped CBS grow its female audience segments. Although she only racked up a total of 54 seconds of airtime over the course of the broadcast, Swift’s occupation of Allegiant Stadium’s luxury box coincided with significant gains among female viewers, with “teens and young adults accounting for some of the biggest ratings.”
Please note that the 58e The Super Bowl episode of the Super Bowl averaged a record 123.7 million viewers, up 7% from last year’s short-lived peak. This year’s demo numbers were nothing short of remarkable. Viewed through the rate-of-change lens, no group showed a greater year-over-year jump than women aged 18 to 24. According to Nielsen, approximately 3.95 million members of that hard-to-reach band tuned in to the Niners-Chiefs nail-biter, marking a 24% increase over last year’s number (3.18 million). Their male counterparts also rose by 20% to 4.61 million viewers, good for a net gain of 753,000. It’s worth noting that adults aged 18 to 24 in the US watch less TV than any other age group; with just 51 minutes of tube time per day, its use has fallen by 25% over the past four years.
Also on Sunday were girls in the 12-17 demo, which rose 11% from 2023 to 2.91 million, while boys saw a 6% increase. A similar dynamic prevailed among the much larger 18-49 demos: Adult women under 50 rose 8% to just over 23 million viewers, while men in the same group rose 4% to 25.5 million. Mothers and grandmothers were not to be denied either, as the number of women aged 35 to 64 grew by 7% to 26.3 million, a big increase compared to the relatively moderate 3% increase at the other end of the gender gap (29 million ).
All told, girls and women accounted for a record 47.5% of the Super Bowl audience, as 5 million more women watched the game this year than was the case a year ago. The gender gap narrowed to just 6.14 million viewers, which was less than the 7.53 million deficit during Super Bowl LVII.
Out-of-home deliveries were one of the few variables that remained more or less static, with 21% of those participating doing so from the cozy confines of a bar, restaurant or someone else’s living room. OOH accounted for 21.7% of all Super Bowl impressions in 2023, and while both numbers were well above the NFL regular season average (13%), the gold standard for non-traditional deliveries remains the Commanders-Cowboys Thanksgiving game (41%).
If a large portion of those who tune in to the Super Bowl each year can be charitably characterized as “casual fans” – it might be more accurate to say that tens of millions of those who adapt to the rituals of Super Sunday do not. Watch plenty, if any, of NFL action during the remaining 364 days of the year. It doesn’t take a data scientist to see that the competition’s title showcase represents what amounts to America’s last true pop culture phenomenon.
The atomization of the entertainment space has put an end to the massive, all-on-hold series finales of yesteryear – all you’re going to do is Friends final figures when 30 million people watch your show every week, and that will never happen again – but the Super Bowl is sui generisan anomaly that confuses and contradicts everything we know about 21st century media consumption.
While the Super Bowl big-tent phenomenon is an extreme outlier, the large increase in female viewers is no coincidence. Yes, the excessive presence of curiosity seekers and partygoers can seriously skew gender relations – the NFL’s roster of casual fans is arguably larger than the total interests of other leagues – the fact that women make up 36% of regular NFL fans The TV audience of the season shows 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 in itself. Girls and young women are especially receptive to the no-contact ripple, and new competitions are popping 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, a 63% increase from 2019. Eight states, including coastal areas like California and New York, have sanctioned flag football for girls as a varsity sport at the high school level, and nearly 30 NAIA colleges have embraced the game.
The accusations of “pink washing” 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 for their habits. Dove’s Super Bowl spot, a paean to body positivity that encouraged young female athletes to stick with it (45% of girls quit organized sports by age 14), was one of the few in-game ads that targeted 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 long before Travis and Taylor were on a boom, KISSING. Certainly none of the CMOs who approved their $7 million Big Game purchases could expect to keep their jobs going if they didn’t trust their messages to be seen by a huge crowd of girls and women; in fact, this year’s attendance was three times larger than the entire 2023 Academy Awards audience.
Only time will tell if a jubilant jabroni with terrible 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 fairytale ending. (Also: stop calling it that. A fairytale ending is when a wolf eats your grandmother and then starts wearing her clothes, not when you hug a female billionaire in front of your mother and 123 million other people.)
Even if things go wrong and Travis moodily pumps Deion Sanders’ “Must Be the Money” from the stereo of his RAV4 next season, while Taylor launches into a devastating break-up ballad (“I Knew You Were Bad News When You Yelled at Coach Andy”), the NFL will feel little more than a pang of passing heartbreak.
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