NFL player Travis Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift has been making headlines all season, even amid news of the Kansas City Chiefs going to the Super Bowl this year.
After Sunday’s (Jan. 28) game, Front Office Sports reported that the pop singer generated roughly $331.5 million in revenue for the football team. The calculations came from print, digital, radio, TV, highlights, and social media mentioning Swift since she made an appearance at one of Kelce’s games on Sept. 24, 2023.
During a midnight (Jan. 29) stream, Shannon Sharpe and Chad Ochocinco Johnson debated whether any other artist or personality could achieve those figures. The former stated, “Tell me the other [musician] that’s going to do that. $331 million in value.”
Johnson responded, “Beyoncé. Hypothetically speaking, if she wasn’t with JAY-Z and not Travis Kelce… Yeah, Beyoncé. She’d move the needle.” However, Sharpe retorted, “Beyoncé is not like this… These eight to 15-year-old eyeballs. I love Beyoncé. Beyoncé ain’t moving the needle like this chick, Ocho. [Taylor Swift] is the closest thing to moving the needle like Michael Jackson that we’ve seen. This is it.”
“Beyoncé moves the needle just like Taylor, if not more… Beyoncé has those same set of eyes: Young, old, middle age, and old, including I,” Johnson argued. “Hypothetically speaking, Beyoncé would move the same way that Taylor is doing. It would be Beyoncé being shown all the time.”
Inevitably, bringing up two of the most popular women in music came with pushback from their respective audiences. Evidently, the BeyHive wasn’t happy with Sharpe downplaying Beyoncé’s influence.
Beyoncé and Swift had the highest-grossing treks in 2023. They were spotted together in October of that year for the premiere of the “Karma” artist’s concert film, The Eras Tour.
In a subsequent Instagram post, Swift praised Queen Bey and thanked her for coming out. She wrote, “I’m so glad I’ll never know what my life would’ve been like without [Beyonce’s] influence. The way she’s taught me and every artist out here to break [the] rules and defy industry norms.”