Yet until a few weeks ago, anyone who didn't closely follow American football would struggle to recognise Kelce, even though the 33-year-old has had top billing in three of the last four Super Bowls, featured prominently in national ad campaigns for Bud Light and Covid vaccinations, and hosted Saturday Night Live this year. Indeed, NFL fans discovered how famous Kelce wasn't once he started to date the singer Taylor Swift.
Their involvement, which was hotly rumoured for weeks, was seemingly confirmed last Sunday when Swift turned up at Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs game against the Chicago Bears. If Swift's colour palette - red lips and nails to match a Chiefs jacket - didn't make her favoured team clear, her seat in the stadium suite next to Kelce's mother, Donna, surely did.
When Kelce scored in the third quarter, the Fox cameras cut to Swift banging on the suite glass, chest-bumping a neighbour and apparently shouting "let's fucking go!".
Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs quarterback who threw the touchdown pass, said afterwards: "I knew I had to get it to Trav... I think he wanted to get in the end zone just as much as all the Swifties wanted him to."
Quickly, Kelce got his taste of fame's next echelon. Last Sunday, "Travis Kelce" was the top Google search term, with more than 5m queries. Sales of his No 87 jersey were up 400%. The Chiefs game, a 41-10 blowout against the league's worst team, was the week's most watched game, with more than 24 million viewers - and Roku TV data showed the game saw a 63% increase in female viewers aged 18 to 49 from the Chiefs' last game. On X (formerly Twitter), Swifties discussed football rules.
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