TAYLOR SWIFT
Taylor Swift’s 14,000-mile Super Bowl trip to see Travis Kelce and the Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs are in Super Bowl LVIII - and Swift will have to hotfoot it back from an Eras Tour date in Japan to cheer on boyfriend Travis Kelce.
Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl! It’s a distinct possibility now, after the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game and booked their place at February’s showpiece event in Las Vegas, Nevada. We think Swift will be there, but she will have a fair amount of travelling to do to get back from her Eras Tour concert in Tokyo, and then on to her next show in Melbourne.
Since she was spotted in the stands at Kansas City’s win over the Chicago Bears in September, the music icon has regularly been seen cheering on Travis Kelce, her boyfriend and the Chiefs’ star tight end. Indeed, Swift has now attended eight of the team’s last nine games.
A Chiefs mainstay - but would Swift miss Super Bowl?
The Chiefs’ win over the Ravens on Sunday took Andy Reid’s men into their fourth Super Bowl in the last five seasons - and having become a fixture at Kansas City matches, Swift would surely be a shoo-in to attend… were it not for her touring commitments. The day before Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, she will be playing the last of four tour dates in Tokyo, some 6,000 miles away.
Would Swift have time to fly back from Eras Tour for Super Bowl?
On Saturday 10 February 2024, Swift is due to perform in the Japanese capital, beginning at 6pm local time. Her Eras Tour concerts tend to last around three and a half hours, so she can be expected to come off stage at Tokyo Dome at sometime between 9:30pm and 10pm. At 3:30pm PT the following day, Sunday 11 February, Super Bowl LVIII kicks off at Allegiant Stadium.
However, although the Super Bowl is technically the day after Swift’s Tokyo concert, the time difference between the two cities actually gives the singer-songwriter just under a day and a half to hotfoot it back to the US. Tokyo is 17 hours ahead of Las Vegas, so the NFL’s championship game doesn’t begin until 35 hours after the anticipated end of her Japanese show.
We couldn’t find any direct commercial flights from Tokyo to Las Vegas, but that clearly would’t matter to Swift. A musician with a net worth that’s now estimated at north of the $1 billion mark, the American has her own private jet at her disposal for the approximately 10-hour flight. And judging by recent research by the sustainability marking firm Yard, isn’t afraid to use it.
In 2022, a Yard study found that Swift’s ‘PJ’ had taken 170 flights between 1 January and 29 July that year, clocking up carbon emissions over 1,000 times greater than the average person’s annual emissions. (In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for Swift claimed that she did not take all of those trips, explaining that the jet “is loaned out regularly to other individuals”.)
When is Swift’s next concert after Super Bowl?
After the Super Bowl, Swift would then be facing an 8,000-mile journey from Las Vegas to her next gig, which is in Melbourne. That makes a total round trip of 14,000 miles from Japan to the US to Australia, but she would at least have more time to make it down under: she isn’t due on stage at the Melbourne Cricket Ground until Friday 16 February.
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NFL embraces Swift effect
Not least because of Swift’s apparently beneficial effect on television ratings, the NFL has embraced its new association with the pop star and, it seems clear, would wholeheartedly welcome her attendance at the Super Bowl.
The NFL’s community managers make constant references to her presence at Chief games in social-media posts, and its broadcast partners regularly cut to shots of her in the stands. What’s more, amid suggestions that the league’s ultimate aim is to woo the 12-time Grammy winner into doing a future Super Bowl half-time show, the New York Post has reported that the organisation asked its networks to air Eras Tour movie trailers for free during their coverage of games.
Swift has never appeared in the Super Bowl half-time show, which this year is to be performed by Usher, but there is speculation that she could be lined up for 2025. The show used to be sponsored by Pepsi, which prevented her from doing the gig as she has a commercial deal with Diet Coke. However, the concert is now partnered with Apple Music.
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