Music and sports are two of the world's biggest entertainment industries, and fans of each are represented by America's newest power couple: pop star Taylor Swift and Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce. Unless chivalry is truly dead, Swift probably didn't have to pay out of pocket to see Kelce's team rout the Bears 41-10 at Arrowhead Stadium this past Sunday, but everyday Swift or Kelce fans usually aren't lucky enough to score free tickets of any kind, let alone box seats next to their favorite performer or player's mom. If Swift and Kelce start to regularly attend each other's games and concerts, which one will be getting the better deal?
Kansas City actually has the priciest tickets in the NFL, as the average resale ticket at Arrowhead Stadium went for $577 heading into the season. Counterintuitively, the tickets will be cheaper when Kelce and the Chiefs head to the Big Apple for Sunday Night Football this coming week. With Jets fans already giving up on the season after losing quarterback Aaron Rodgers to a torn Achilles on his first drive with the team, prices for the primetime affair have dropped to an average of $362. If Swift follows Kelce to MetLife Stadium, fans could have a chance to catch a live glimpse of the singer for a much lower cost than they did in May, when tickets to any of her three concerts at MetLife Stadium cost at least $1,563 for upper-level seats and climbed to over $4,000 for floor seats.
Even hardcore NFL fans who think of D'Andre before Taylor when they hear the last name Swift are probably aware that the singer is in the middle of arguably the most popular and lucrative concert tour ever. The Eras Tour began March 17 and is scheduled to span 146 shows through November 23, 2024. The average resale ticket price for Swift's Chicago concert in August was $1,619, so Midwesterners got comparatively better prices than New Yorkers, but they still had to shell out multiple football games' worth of cash to see Swift. Presale tickets were significantly cheaper, but demand for Swift concerts far outstripped supply and pushed up prices, as over two million tickets were sold on Nov. 15, 2022 – the first day that Ticketmaster made verified fan presale tickets available. Seeing Swift in another city or another country can potentially cut down costs, and Swifites priced out in the U.S. have traveled everywhere from Mexico City to Stockholm to catch the star singer at a more affordable price, but even excluding travel expenses, attending one Swift concert costs closer to a season ticket package for Kelce's Chiefs than a single game.
The recent success Kelce and quarterback Patrick Mahomes have brought Kansas City has raised the team's valuation to $4.3 billion. By the time Swift's Eras Tour is said and done, it's expected to gross well over $1 billion on its own, and Swift gave over $55 million in bonuses to her touring crew at the conclusion of the concert's first leg. That's almost as much Kelce will make over the life of the four-year, $57 million contract he signed with the Chiefs prior to the start of the 2022 season. Rising ticket prices in the NFL have irked fans in recent years, and average Chiefs tickets have gone up more than $200 compared to last season, but "Kelcies" still have it much better than "Swifties" when it comes to the affordability of seeing their favorite star live.
