Crowd reacts after Trump breaks with tradition at Super Bowl

The Super Bowl – the biggest event on the US sporting calendar – predates Woodstock, the Boeing 747 and man walking on the moon.

And yet, in all that time, no sitting president has ever attended the game. Until now.

President Donald Trump walks on to the field before the start of the NFL Super Bowl.Credit: AP

Donald Trump’s tendency to do things differently saw him take a seat at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans for the showdown between reigning champions the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.

In Australia, prime ministers are virtually a guaranteed presence at football finals, tennis matches and the cricket. The only thing surer than them turning up is them getting booed.

But it just isn’t so in the United States, despite the quasi-religious status of the National Football League.

Instead, custom has it that the president records an interview that airs before the game on the network that owns the broadcast rights that year.

Trump salutes for the national anthem at the Super Bowl.Credit: AP

It’s not a particularly old tradition – it only really took off in Barack Obama’s first term – and it’s certainly not mandatory. Trump skipped it in 2018 and Joe Biden declined in the latter two years of his term, fuelling speculation and concern about his capacity to give interviews.

Michael MacCambridge, author of America’s Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation, said part of the reason presidents might have stayed away from the Super Bowl was simply the massive security exercise involved, adding to the already complex security arrangements around the big game.

But it was also cultural, he suggested. “The short answer is that there’s probably a lower tolerance to being booed among American politicians than Australian ones,” he told this masthead.

Trump briefly appeared on the Superdome’s jumbotron while saluting during Jon Batiste’s rendition of the US national anthem. The crowd erupted, with the cheers almost certainly outweighing the boos, though both were certainly present. The White House claimed it as a win, promoting the footage on its X account.

Trump, the then owner of the New Jersey Generals, with footballer Herschel Walker in 1984.Credit: nna\advidler

His decision to attend – and risk a much more negative response from football fans – suggests confidence from a president who is known for his sensitivity to crowd sizes and the like. Trump left the game after half-time as expected, with the Chiefs – his pick to win – yet to score.

MacCambridge noted that as well as there being no precedent for a sitting president attending the Super Bowl, “there’s also no real precedent for previous presidents having tried so hard to own a team in the NFL”.

Over several decades, Trump attempted to buy, or expressed interest in buying, the Baltimore Colts, Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills. In the 1980s, he purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the fledgling and short-lived United States Football League.

In his first term, Trump courted controversy with his calls for the NFL to fire players who declined to stand for the national anthem as a protest against racially motivated violence. Trump accused the players of disrespecting the flag and the country, and encouraged fans to boycott games until action was taken.

Front row from left: Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara, New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson, Trump, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her son Theodore.Credit: AP

“Like a lot of other things that happened, those past interactions seem to have been forgotten by a large portion of the American public,” MacCambridge said.

Now, amid Trump’s dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government, the NFL has opted to remove the message “End Racism” from the end zones of the field. The words have appeared each year since 2021.

Instead, the message “Choose Love” will appear, alongside “It Takes All of Us”. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told The Athletic, which revealed the change: “We felt it was an appropriate statement for what the country has collectively endured, given recent tragedies, and can serve as an inspiration.”

This Super Bowl, Trump may find himself only the second most famous American in the crowd. Pop megastar Taylor Swift was in New Orleans to support her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, who plays tight end for the Chiefs.

Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie at a 1985 press conference, after signing a multi-year contract with the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League, alongside Trump, then the team’s owner.Credit: AP

Swift memorably backed Kamala Harris for the presidency – an endorsement that seemed so significant at the time it prompted Trump to write on Truth Social: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”

If that caused any lingering resentments, they seem to have dried up. Trump remarked the game would feature “the absolute best tight end in football (ever!)” in an apparent reference to Kelce, whilethe Chiefs star said it was an honour to have the president in the stands.

In an early clip from Trump’s Super Bowl pre-game interview on Fox News, the president was asked about the extraordinary power he has granted billionaire Elon Musk to inspect and carve up the bureaucracy in a drive to cut costs.

“He’s not gaining anything. In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it, he’s so into it,” Trump said, and indicated Musk would soon be instructed to audit the Education Department and the US military.

“We’re going to find hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. The people elected me on that.”

Next year, the NFL will host a regular season game in Australia for the first time, with the Los Angeles Rams to play at the MCG. The game does not yet have a date, but a week one outing would coincide with AFL finals.

The Victorian government has not confirmed the cost of the deal, but the NSW government reportedly passed it up at a price tag of $15 million.

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