Since launching their “New Heights” podcast in September 2022, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce have welcomed their fair share of prominent guests — Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and coach Andy Reid, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, to name a few. And Wednesday night, the brothers’ show is sure to live up to its name when it adds singer/songwriter Taylor Swift to that list.
The Kelce-Swift podcast crossover has been a long time coming for those who follow the orbit of sports culture’s favorite couple. In a 13-second (intentional) teaser clip Monday, “New Heights” confirmed Swift as the week’s special guest. Later, at 12:12 a.m. on Aug. 12 (also intentional), the account posted another video, announcing Swift’s release of her 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Posted at 12:12 on the 12th. ❤️🔥 Tay’s 12th album is called…………
pre pre-order now at https://t.co/oGYV230otf pic.twitter.com/gUAIEEDZmm
— New Heights (@newheightshow) August 12, 2025
The well-documented relationship between Swift and Travis Kelce is a testament to the overlap between sports and pop culture. While Swift has become a common presence at Chiefs games, Kelce has also dabbled in the entertainment industry, both with his growing podcast presence and in a cameo role as a waiter in Netflix’s “Happy Gilmore 2,” which was released in July.
Swift and Kelce were first linked when the NFL player attended her Eras Tour show at Arrowhead Stadium in July 2023 and said he wanted to give Swift a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it, a confession he made on his podcast, nonetheless. After a few months of speculation, Swift was spotted at her first Chiefs game in September of that year.
Since then, the two have seemed to embrace their shared notoriety more often. Kelce appeared onstage as a dancer at one of Swift’s Eras Tour shows in London; Swift gave a surprise performance during Kelce’s “Tight End University” event in June; and, most recently, Kelce posted an offseason photo dump on Instagram, featuring several pictures of his girlfriend.
In The Athletic’s anonymous player poll last year, a comfortable majority of the 102 players who responded (72.5 percent) said Swift’s presence at Chiefs games was positive for the NFL. Just 4.9 percent said her presence was negative, and the remaining 22.6 percent said neither.
Soon after Swift’s emergence onto the NFL scene, the league saw record-setting engagement, with triple-digit growth in consumption across various social media platforms in a continued effort to attract a younger and more diversified male/female split audience, NFL senior vice president of social and influencer marketing Ian Trombetta said.
Aside from news swirling on his platform earlier this week, Kelce also opened up about football and his relationship with Swift in a September cover story with GQ. In it, he detailed how the couple relates in their shared pressure of being under the public eye, his respect for Swift’s work ethic and his girlfriend’s newfound fandom.
“I sort of made her a football fan,” Kelce said. “She is the most engulfed fan now. She knows what the injury reports look like. She understands what special situations are, third-and-short — all these things because she just naturally loves to hear about my job.”
The “New Heights” episode featuring Swift will release Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET. It’s sure to be a first-of-its-kind, as Swift has steered mostly clear of podcast interviews in recent years. She last appeared on “The Zane Lowe Interview Series” in 2020 after winning Apple Music’s Songwriter of the Year.
(Photo: Emily Curiel / The Kansas City Star / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
