The best thing Taylor Swift has done is promote the Kelce family

I don’t care if she did it for the plot, for even more publicity for herself, but this TV fan thanks her for her service to social media.

Travis and Jason’s mother Donna Kelce with singer Taylor Swift were first seen at the Chicago Bears and the Kansas City Chiefs game back in September. Photo - Getty

I am extremely easy to influence.

Not in a way that ICAC needs to look into, but a recent event (which to be honest gives me the ick) now sees me sitting here with Kayo streaming in the background and the official NFL Store website open, cart full of merch, because I’m suddenly invested in American football.

I’m definitely more of your Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen vintage when it comes to the NFL but now — and I hate to admit it — my new obsession is all down to Taylor Swift and her much publicised “situationship” with Kansas City Chiefs star and Superbowl champion tight end Travis Kelce.

Yes I too was among the record-breaking 27-million strong audience who tuned into a recent Chiefs game as they beat the New York Jets 23-20.

Swift was there alongside Hugh Jackman, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.

It was one for the record books, the random “Sunday night footy match” was the most watched game since the SuperBowl back in February.

For some local context, about 3.75m tuned into the AFL grand final last month and 3.52m watched the Penrith Panthers achieve a treble premiership in the NRL. Both codes were pantsed by the Matildas though, with 11 million of us watching the women’s team in the World Cup – the highest mark for any TV show since the modern ratings system was introduced in 2001.

All of this pales in comparison to how the NFL rates in the US, which makes sense when you compare our populations, but the figures are nonetheless jaw-dropping.

Deadline reported last week, with Swift once again in attendance at that NFL game, there was a 53 per cent spike in viewership of girls aged 12-17. The audience among women between the ages of 18-24 was up 24 per cent and 34 per cent for women 35 and older.

Sorry Swifties, but the true stars of this marketing fever dream are her rumoured boyfriend, Travis, and his older brother – fellow NFL player Jason Kelce.

The latter has also won a Superbowl with his team – the Philadelphia Eagles and is a burgeoning cattle farmer, real estate mogul, podcaster and documentary star.

How do I know this? Google helps but it’s not as compelling as his new production – Kelce.

It’s the new 90-minute film that chronicles all this and more, including his 12-year long NFL career with the Eagles where he as a captain figure and critical centre player led them to their first SuperBowl in 2018, the team’s first premiership win since 1960.

The film is now Amazon Prime’s most watched documentary – ever – in the US and homes in on the Eagles’ run up to another SuperBowl berth in 2023 which saw him matched up against his brother.

It also highlights the incredible toll NFL level football has on (the extremely well-paid) players.

At 35, Jason Kelce is one of the oldest players in the league. To maintain his match fitness, he requires a diet of daily anti-inflammatories and, while listing his injuries to nearly every part of body, he admits that “everything has a little bit of arthritis”.

As a centre, head collisions happen weekly, if not daily during drills and training. He talks about the long-term impact of concussions and worries about CTE but says he’ll be happy if he – a father of three young girls – “at some stage” forgets the names of his grandchildren because he got to bring so much joy to the community.

“Hungry dogs run faster”, is his catchcry that now adorns official team merchandise and Jason is lauded as a god in the city. He is rarely legitimately hungry. Judging from his refreshingly normal diet of regular beers and pizza.

The doco is a lovely homage to his parents, who sacrificed a lot of themselves to ensure their sons were successful in pursuing their dreams of playing pro one day. Both Donna and Ed Kelce outline how they decided not to separate “for the boys’ sake” and are now both living apart but still attend nearly every single game.

Jason, unlike Travis, did not win a scholarship to a university so had to work extra hard to prove himself academically and in the gym just to get noticed.

One of the best moments of the show is Jason winning his final before rushing out of the stadium to watch his brother win his own qualifying game that saw the history-making “KelceBowl” – where two brothers played in the SuperBowl for the first time.

The Chiefs won and from there Travis’s star has continued to rise, while Jason is more like a simmering cult figure.

Their podcast, New Heights, was topping the charts even before Swift emerged on the scene.

@newheightshow

Guess she got the bracelet after all 😅

♬ original sound - New Heights

She herself would have known of Jason before meeting his little brother, as she is reportedly an Eagles fan. It’s something she confessed in her 2020 song Gold Rush with the line: “Eagles T-shirt shirt hanging from the door”.

Jason’s wife Kylie needs to be a breakout star too. The mum of three girls under five is a delight to watch. The pair met on Tinder, with Kylie thinking she was being “catfished”.

“An hour into the date at the bar, he fell asleep,” she says of their courtship.

This Amazon show is not the first Kelce-centric TV experiment.

Travis, back in 2016, starred in his own version of The Bachelor called Catching Kelce.

While Taylor and Travis have given me the ick, this made me cringe.

Kelce is streaming now on Amazon Prime.

Catching Kelce is streaming on Hulu.