Cashing in on the Taylor Swift and NFL synergy, eh?
Ever since the pop superstar and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce started dating (they’re now engaged), Taylor Swift has been involved with the NFL in some form or fashion. The process has been quite simple, actually. She attends her significant other’s games, and the NFL cameras find her up in the suite cheering Kelce on.
And the National Football League has seen an uptick in a younger, female demographic tuning in because of it.
Swift and Kelce’s relationship started in the summer of 2023. That was presumably the first year that Swift was a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs, and that worked out well for her and all the other “Swifties” that adopted that NFL team as their favorite. Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs won the Super Bowl that year, and then made it back to the “Big Game” the following season… but lost to the Philadelphia Eagles.
All that to say, it was smooth sailing for Taylor Swift as a football fan for those first couple of years. This most recent season – the one in which Kelce and her were engaged – was not so pretty. Kelce’s team finished with a 6 and 11 record… their first losing season since 2012. It was almost as if all of the good juju the team had experienced in their countless Super Bowl runs balanced itself out this year.
Because the Chiefs weren’t doing as well in 2025, you didn’t hear much out of them other than the question of, “When will they get it together and sneak into the playoffs?” They never did that, and an injury to Patrick Mahomes in mid-December put the final nail in the coffin for the Chiefs’ postseason hopes. And since the Chiefs struggled down the home stretch, it seemed as though fans weren’t shown Taylor Swift all that much as the season went on.
But that doesn’t mean that she wasn’t there, or that the NFL wasn’t trying to continue the synergy with the pop star that ended up being so profitable for them.
There were rumors that the NFL was pushing very hard to have Taylor Swift be the Super Bowl halftime performer for 2026. That obviously didn’t work out, since Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny got the honors instead. It would have made a lot of sense for The Life of a Showgirl singer to take the stage at the “Big Game,” but things just didn’t work out.
However, the fast-food restaurant chain Dairy Queen is doing their part to make Taylor Swift a part of the Super Bowl, and the halftime show for that matter. They actually just announced a “Taylor-Swift Halftime Feast” deal, which is basically just a chicken strip party platter with the big name (or names) slapped onto it. What’s the catch, you might be asking?
Taylor Swift isn’t endorsing Dairy Queen. Instead, it’s NFL players Tyrod Taylor and D’Andre Swift.
Admittedly, it’s a clever campaign that’s playing off the relationship that has formed between the NFL and Taylor Swift. The fast food establishment famous for their Blizzards knew that getting the pop star herself would probably be a stretch, so they went and got a back up quarterback from the New York Jets and a running back from the Chicago Bears.
The two players’ last names just so happen to come together to form a familiar, much more famous name:
“This halftime show, what if we told you, DQ is bringing you Taylor and Swift. Introducing Taylor and Swift’s halftime feast.”
Well done, Dairy Queen. Well done.
