The Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Backlash Has Begun

Media coverage of Taylor Swift cheering on her rumored boyfriend, Travis Kelce, during his NFL game on Sunday sparked a wave of backlash across social media.

Pop star Swift, 33, was joined by a host of celebrity friends—including Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Hugh Jackman and Shawn Levy—as she watched Kansas City Chiefs tight end Kelce, 33, and his teammates take on the New York Jets.

While neither Swift nor Kelce have explicitly confirmed the nature of their relationship, speculation of a romance has all but increased with each game that the singer has been seen attending.

And the power of her presence has been felt. Footage of Swift cheering on Kelce as his team emerged victorious over the Chicago Bears on September 24 led to a 400 percent spike in sales of the sportsman’s jersey. He gained millions of social media followers in just a matter of days.

However, while the Swift and Kelce connection has excited some fans, other sports enthusiasts have suggested that the coverage has become a distraction.

Such were the objections as the Chiefs edged a victory over the Jets at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium that “Enough Taylor Swift” started trending on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Political commentator Tomi Lahren—who has publicly criticized Swift and Kelce—opined that coverage of the relationship was “destroying” football, a sport she admitted in the same post to not being a fan of.

“The wall-to-wall coverage of Taylor Swift at this game is annoying [as f***],” she wrote on X. “I don’t even like football and I agree it’s destroying football. Just enough.”

Joining in on the flood of complaints, another X user said: “You would think Taylor Swift was the quarterback the way they cannot stop saying her name.”

“Ok @NFL. That’s enough of Taylor Swift!!!!!! Get back to football,” commented another.

“Taylor Swift has ruined football,” another charged. “We don’t want to hear about her AT ALL.”

“This is ESPN,” said another. “It’s extremely unprofessional to ignore a game between one of the biggest super bowl contenders and the reigning super bowl champions to talk about the washed irrelevant to football girlfriend of one of the players.”

“Me every time they mention Taylor Swift,” @NFL_Memes captioned a video clip of Swift coverage, followed by footage of Charlie Day yelling “shut up” in a scene from the sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Some detractors went as far as to suggest that referee decisions in the Chiefs’ favor was all part of a ploy to keep the team on a winning streak and thus boost income, given Swift’s expected presence.

“The NFL couldn’t allow any chance of the Jets beating the Chiefs because it would cause Chiefs fans to turn sour on the presence of Taylor Swift and kill the money making synergistic relationship between her and Travis Kelce,” read one viral post. “Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk on why the refs were so bad.”

“And this ain’t no conspiracy,” an X user responded. “Sales have sky rocketed across the board, her fan base is an entire new market they can tap into, any body at the top would make sure this goes on as long as it can. Business 101.”

Amid the sea of naysayers were an army of X users defending Swift from the onslaught of criticism.

Responding to Lahren’s post, one wrote: “I do like football and shots of Taylor Swift do the game no harm. If not her, they’d show cutaways of drunk idiots painted in colors of teams whose players don’t care about them. But since you don’t even like football, why does this bother you? #fakeoutrage.”

“The ‘I don’t even like football’ proves that they’ll find any reason to hate on Taylor Swift,” said another in response to Lahren’s criticism.

As one fan called on Swift’s fans to get “NOT ENOUGH Taylor Swift” trending on X, another addressed the fact that “enough Taylor Swift” and “no one cares” were trending on the platform.

“OF COURSE people care,” the fan said. “Taylor sold more tickets at her Nashville show than last year’s Superbowl did. Stay mad sports bros.”

Another chimed in that “over-serious blowhards need to relax on criticizing the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce thing. It’s AWESOME, it’s FUN and it’s American culture in all its corn-syrup glory. Are you not entertained?”

Newsweek has contacted a representative of Swift via email for comment.

Kelce addressed the Swift romance speculation on his podcast, New Heights, which was released last Wednesday. Referencing Swift’s appearance at his game on Sunday, Kelce said: “Shout out to Taylor for pulling up.”

“I just thought how it was awesome how everybody in the suite had nothing but great things to say about her,” Kelce said as he spoke with his brother and fellow podcast host Jason Kelce, of the Philadelphia Eagles.

“The friends and family, she looked amazing, everybody was talking about her in great light, and on top of that the day went perfect for Chiefs fans of course,” Travis Kelce added, in reference to his team’s 41-10 victory over the Chicago Bears.

The brothers also joked about how Chiefs head coach Andy Reid may have played matchmaker as he knew the Swift family beforehand. “Who knew Cupid was so big,” Travis Kelce quipped.