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Kansas City Chiefs president Mark Donovan shared in a new interview how the team plans to deal with another year of Taylor Swift mania in Arrowhead Stadium.
While Taylor Swift didn’t attend a Chiefs game last year until the third week of the NFL season, this year Kansas City has three home games before she will have to jet off to perform on her world tour.
“With Taylor, she brings a lot with her and it’s a pretty valuable targeted demographic when you look at the makeup of her fan base,” Mark Donovan told David Rumsey of Front Office Sports. “And we’ve looked at ways that we can be respectful.
“I had a great conversation with with Travis [Kelce] the first game that Taylor came to, this was prior to the game, and I grabbed Travis after practice and just said, ‘Hey, I’m hearing through the grapevine that Taylor’s coming to the game.’
“He said, ‘Yeah, she wants to come to the game. That’s on her. I’m gonna focus on the game.’
“I’m like, ‘Okay, that’s fine, um, it’s Taylor Swift, so we sort of have to plan for this and make sure, we’ve got a plan for her. We’re going to take her through these certain entrances and you know, make sure that she’s safe and make sure that we manage the crowd reaction.
“And Travis’s response was, ‘She wants to come as a fan. She doesn’t want all this stuff. Deal with her. I’m playing football.’
“And I was like okay, but you know she can’t come through the main gate. That’s not gonna work. And he said, ‘No, she wants to come through the main gate like a fan.
“I’m like, ‘Trav, like, that can’t happen.’
“And so we had this entire intricate plan. Her security team came the day before. We had this great way of getting in and out, everything was going to be great. You know, unlike we do with other VIPs.
“So the day of the game I get a call from our head of security saying Taylor doesn’t like the plan. She’s coming through the main gate. And she did. She, you know, put on a hat and a COVID mask and some sunglasses and brought a group of people and they all came right through the main gate.
“Because that’s what she wants. She wants to be a fan, right? This is her off time. She wants to to be there and support Travis um and we’re going to create that opportunity or we provide that opportunity.”
Donovan also said the Chiefs made a point last season in Arrowhead Stadium to not play a single Taylor Swift song during games.
“That was a sign of respect,” he said. “Like, we’re not trying to capitalize on this. We’re trying to celebrate it, but it’s not about, you know, doing too much or showing her every touchdown or anything like that. She never appeared on our big board.
“We had one day when we had, you know, six or seven big celebrities in the stadium and so prior to the game, you know, we show them on the sideline and put them on the big board and the fans react and it’s another way of saying like, ‘This is the place to be. The coolest people in entertainment are here too.’
“And I went to Travis afterwards I’m like, ‘It’s a little odd to me that we showed like four Hollywood people, two entertainers, a comedian, and Taylor’s in her suite watching but we’re not showing her. He’s like, ‘Let’s just keep doing it the way we’re doing it.'”
Considering the fact that, as Front Office Sports reports, Taylor Swift generated an equivalent brand value of $331.5 million for the Chiefs and the NFL in 2023, it’s little wonder they are more than willing to bend over backwards to please her (and promote her).