The NFL scored some monster ratings for its “Sunday Night Football” game on Sunday when Taylor Swift showed up to watch rumored boyfriend Travis Kelce’s Chiefs take on the New York Jets in New York.
The showdown and ultimate 23-20 victory by Kansas City over the Jets in the final minutes of the game gave NBC its largest audience so far this season, with an average of nearly 27 million viewers across all its platforms, according to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics provided by NBC Sports.
In the coveted demographic for advertisers of ages 18-49, the network experienced an increase of 24 percent and in women ages 35 and up the audience jumped by another 34 percent. In females ages 12-17 the viewership spiked over the previous three “Sunday Night Football” broadcasts by a whopping 53 percent.
The Taylor Swift impact: Viewership among teen girls (age 12-17) spiked 53% from the season-to-date average of the first three weeks of SNF, while the audience among women aged 18-24 was up 24%, and women 35+ increased 34%, per Nielsen.
The combined growth led to an approximate… https://t.co/usj0bev2Ah
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) October 2, 2023
And the reason more women tuned in to watch the game between the Chiefs and the Jets is believed to be because of the presence of Swift — who showed up to the game to watch Kelce along with her pack of star-studded pals like Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Sophie Turner, and Hugh Jackman, the Hollywood Reporter noted.
Swift’s presence meant a spike of some 2 million female viewers who tuned in to watch the broadcast and most undoubtedly catch anything the “Shake It Off” hitmaker was doing and try to analyze any looks between Kelce and the pop singer to prove the dating rumors, CNN noted.
The telecast saw an average of 24.83 million viewers, marking a 19 percent improvement compared to the same time in 2022. While it was the TV-only audience highest watched game of the 2023 season, across all platforms viewership fell from the season opener’s 27.5 million viewers, when the Chiefs played the Detroit Lions on Thursday night Sept. 7, THR noted.
NBC says thanks to Sunday’s game streaming on NBC Sports, Peacock, and NFL Digital platforms, 1.85 million viewers watched the game, making it the network’s largest streaming audience ever for a regular-season game on Sunday, the outlet noted.
Swift’s presence marked her second such appearance at an NFL game so far this season. The first was when she shocked fans and showed up in Kelce’s suite in Kansas City — sitting next to his mom Donna Kelce last week — when the Chiefs came away with a huge victory against the Chicago Bears 41-10.
Related: Travis Kelce On Taylor Swift Dating Rumors: ‘Threw The Ball In Her Court’