Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at the Super Bowl Create a Gambling Frenzy
You might forget, in all the frenzy, that neither Taylor Swift nor Travis Kelce have confirmed that Swift will travel to Las Vegas to watch Kelce—a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs—play against the San Francisco 49ers at Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, February 11. That certainly hasn’t stopped many of us from assuming she’ll be there, and now bookies and gambling platforms are taking things a bit further. This year’s Super Bowl proposition bets (that is, bets about the game unrelated to its outcome) have a strong Swift focus. Every move she makes, it seems, could win or lose somebody some money next Sunday.
Prop bets aren’t anything new, but with the Supreme Court-fueled rise of sports betting across the nation, they’ve become a household term, and a gateway pursuit into harder-core gambling. “It’s a way to draw people in,” University of South Carolina sports and entertainment management prof Stephen Shapiro tells NPR. “And so this Taylor Swift component, I think, brings an additional opportunity.”
Some platforms, like online sportsbook BetUS, are allowing users to bet on if the pair will “be shown kissing after the game,” “announce their first pregnancy,” or “say ‘I love you.’” Other bets focus on live shots of the singer during the game—will she wave a foam finger? Eat a hot dog? Hold a drink? Hug Donna Kelce?
BetOnline, another online gambling platform, tells NPR that it made a concerted effort to “come up with the biggest menu of Taylor Swift prop bets in the world,” brand manager Dave Mason said. That platform is urging folks to put money on the primary color of Swift’s shirt to the game, what color lipstick she’ll be wearing (not betting against red, y’all), or if she will “show bra/brassiere.”
Almost every sportsbook places a lot of focus on when and how often Swift will be shown in the stands, all decisions made by the folks running the broadcast for the NFL and CBS. But if Jason Kelce, Travis’s big brother and center for the Philadelphia Eagles, has his way, she’ll be shown early and often.
“She’s a world star and the quintessential artist right now in the world,” the elder Kelce told WCPO Friday.
“The attention’s there because the audience wants to see it. If people didn’t want to see it, they wouldn’t be showing it, I know that.” Swift is “immensely talented, an unbelievable role model for young women across the globe, so I think that the NFL would probably be foolish not to show her and show her be a role model for all the young girls out there.”
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