Swiftian Economics Super Bowl

If the NFL is about anything it’s about economics. Commissioner Roger Goodell and the collective owners must be tickled…green about the $331.5 million in equivalent brand value that Taylor Swift has meant for the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL. After all, it’s all for one and one for all for the colossus Pete Rozelle built. 

Rozelle negotiated a larger TV deal in 1960 “predicated on a new revenue-sharing strategy: Money would be pooled among all NFL teams, essentially guaranteeing them profitability each season before a single pass was thrown,” writes Peter Funt in the Wall Street Journal.  

A U.S. District Court voided the deal on antitrust grounds.  Rozelle then lobbied Capitol Hill for the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, “giving a professional sports league the right to sell all games of its individual teams as a package, a structure that dramatically changed the business of football.”

What was a $4.65 million deal in 1960 is now $11.46 billion. Among 2023’s 100 most-watched TV programs, according to Neilson, 93 were NFL games, with the Super Bowl’s 115.1 million viewers topping the list.

Speaking of business, Ms. Swift will do hers–performing a concert in Tokyo on the 10th– and then fly to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl on the 11th. The game is projected to break all TV viewership records and with the increased female interest in seeing a gushing, cheering Swift and at least one tight end, the roster of advertisers will be a little different.  Beauty brands Dove, e.l.f. eyes lips face, and NYX Professional Makeup have purchased what every year is the most expensive ad time in the world. 

In 1967, a 30-second spot on NBC’s broadcast of the first Super Bowl cost an average of $37,500, this year a similarly-placed half-minute spot goes for $7 million.  As economist Murray Rothbard wrote in Man, Economy and State, 

It is because the range of goods available to the consumers is expanding so much beyond simple staples needed for subsistence, in quantity, quality, and breadth of product substitutes, that businessmen must compete as never before in paying court to the consumer, in trying to obtain his attention: in short, in advertising. Increasing advertising is a function of the increasingly effective range of competition for the consumer’s favor.

Margaret Fleming writing for Front Office Sports explains, “Unsurprisingly, the relationship impacts Swifties and their financial decisions a lot. Swift’s fans are about three times more likely to buy sports merchandise because of the “Love Story,” and about twice as likely to both explore sports content and tune in for games including the Super Bowl, according to a survey from Adtaxi.”

Swift has helped cement the Chiefs as a top TV draw. Fleming writes, “One example: Last year’s divisional win over the Jacksonville Jaguars drew an average of 34.3 million viewers. Last week’s divisional win over the Buffalo Bills set an all-time record of 50.4 million average viewers.”

Fox News, scared of any democrat-voting celebrity going bump in the night, thinks Travis and Tay-Tay’s love affair was hatched at CIA headquarters. The Guardian reports Fox News host Jesse Watters said the Swift-Kelce romance was “cooked up in a lab”, while former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called them an “artificially culturally propped up couple” staged for a Biden endorsement. 

“Without Taylor saying a word about the 2024 election, they have somehow spun themselves into an elaborate conspiracy theory where mysterious forces are manufacturing her fame in order to set up an endorsement of Joe Biden,” Seth Meyers concluded on his show Late Night.   

The NFL is unquestionably a political construct generating billions for its owners, coaches and players. For instance, the merger of the NFL and AFL “required an antitrust exemption that was granted only after Rozelle promised the powerful Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs an NFL franchise for New Orleans,” explains Funt. 

But while Ms. Swift’s Eras Tour was given credit for moving the needle of GDP last summer, it’s doubtful she can change the hearts and minds of Trump voters.  

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