Travis Kelce's friendship with Taylor Swift caused his Instagram following to soar by over three million in 2023. One can only wonder what will happen in 2024 - is it likely to grow more until it drops when something unexpected happens?
The tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs has earned immense renown because he has been at the top of the NFL for a lot of years.
However, it is undeniable that Kelce is benefiting greatly from his friendship with Swift and her attendance at his Chiefs games in recent months, which have catapulted him into the spotlight.
Five athletes had a social media breakthrough in 2023, each accumulating more than two million Instagram followers, according to new statistics from Sportico.
Among them is Kelce, who had previously experienced a roughly 500,00 increase in Instagram followers following the Chiefs' Super Bowl victory in Arizona in February 2023. However, that was insignificant in comparison to the impending events. Before Swift showed up to her first Chiefs game, a victory against the Chicago Bears in September, his fan base numbered just under three million.
Despite having one of his least successful seasons as a Chiefs player, Kelce has continued to progress. On Saturday night, they will host the Dolphins as they continue their playoff run. Swift might witness Kelce's potential Super Bowl run in Las Vegas, which would put him in danger of being even more well-known. Still, Kelce's fan base is little compared to that of his fiancée.
With an absurd 279 million followers on Instagram, Swift is the 12th most followed individual. Even though Kelce's account had a horde of Swifties following him, someone else amassed more followers in 2023 than him. That would be Shohei Ohtani, the baseball phenom who recently inked a massive 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Japanese sensation, who is the first real two-way player in baseball since Babe Ruth, was the sport's top free agent this winter. His contract broke the $426.5 million sum that his former team paid Mike Trout in 2019, setting a new record for MLB.
Ohtani's Dodgers colleague Mookie Betts has a $365 million contract, while Aaron Judge of the Yankees is currently fourth on the all-time list with a $360 million deal.
Such power couples are not unprecedented in US sports. Before Becks and the Kardashians made sports of Black athletes leveling up, and before Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady were American football's Posh, Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees and Marilyn Monroe became the archetype of the all-American relationship-athletic brawn and the Hollywood bombshell. When Madonna dated Dennis Rodman in the height of his Chicago Bulls career, she reframed the relationship as one of rock star excess. Now we have Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and it remains to be seen if it'll last.
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