Travis Kelce was full of praise for girlfriend Taylor Swift on New Heights after the conclusion of her ‘insane’ Eras Tour last week.
Swift’s mammoth run of critically-acclaimed shows across the world became a cultural phenomenon and finally concluded on Sunday night in Vancouver.
The tour brought in a staggering $2.2billion in its nearly two-year run, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time for a second year in a row.
The globe-spanning event kicked off in Arizona on March 17, 2023. Sunday’s show in Canada was the 149th Eras performance, following stops in cities ranging from Buenos Aires to Paris and Tokyo.
Swift was already on tour when she began publicly dating Kelce, the NFL star and three-time Super Bowl winner with the Kansas City Chiefs, towards the end of 2023.
Kelce has been to a number of shows, 14 in total, and flown on private jets to take in his girlfriend’s concerts in places like Singapore, Australia and Germany. He even got on stage for one song in London.
It’s certainly been a family affair, too. His brother Jason, his wife Kylie and their three daughters have also been spotted at shows as the family has come to terms with their newfound fame.
Speaking on New Heights this week, the first show after the Eras Tour’s conclusion, Travis said: ‘Shoutout to Tay, and the unbelievable Eras Tour has finally come to an end.’
Jason then asked his brother: ‘So how long was it?’
Travis continued: ‘I think it was almost two years. March of the year that we played in the Super Bowl. 149 shows. It’s insane.
‘Over 10 million people in the stands over the course of it, it’s pretty crazy.
‘Shoutout to everybody who was part of that show. Obviously it’s her music, it’s her tour, but that was a full production man, that thing.
‘It was the best tour in the world because of a lot of people. But mostly because of Taylor!’
Kelce couldn’t make Swift’s last show in Vancouver because of his NFL commitments but the 34-year-old pop megastar made sure to shoutout the tight end, 35, during her final performance.
Swifties were very excited as she once again referenced Travis when performing Karma.
As she has done for a lot of the tour, she belted out ‘Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me’ to replace the original lyric, ‘Karma is the guy on the screen coming straight home to me’.
The original line from the 2022 was a referenced to actor boyfriend Joe Alwyn whom she dated from 2016 to 2023.
The swap to Kelce was first made in November 2023 during her concert in Buenos Aires at the Estadio River Plate stadium and has since prompted wild screams from fans every time she sings it.
The good news for Kelce and Swift is they can now spend more quality time together with her Eras Tour now over.
With more time on her hands, Taylor now has the option to attend more of Travis’ Chiefs games after attending just five so far in 2024, which is less than she did at this stage last year.
She has four more chances to see Kansas City play in the regular season, though only one of them is a home fixture at Arrowhead, with the Houston Texans due to visit on December 21.
The other three remaining games come on the road against the Cleveland Browns (December 15), Pittsburgh Steelers (December 25) and the Denver Broncos (January 5).
Swift’s camp has not publicly released ticket revenue numbers for the tour but the widely cited trade magazine Pollstar has estimated the figure at more than $2bn.
That smashes the record previously held by Elton John’s pandemic-interrupted ‘Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour,’ which sold an estimated $939million in tickets over 328 shows spread across five years.
The tour also earned sterling critical acclaim, with reviewers praising Swift’s stamina and energy through shows that have averaged just under four hours.
A setback came in Vienna this summer when three shows were cancelled after authorities arrested a man in connection with an Islamist terror plot.
And tragedy struck when a fan died from heat exhaustion during a show in Rio de Janeiro in November last year.
The tour also included a ‘will she, won’t she’ moment of suspense that transcended the world of pop music.
The question was whether Swift had enough time after finishing a show in Tokyo on February 10 to make it to Las Vegas in time to see Kelce and the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl.
It is rare for a non-football storyline to dominate discussion ahead of America’s premier sporting event.
But concern about Swift’s schedule was so acute that the Japanese embassy in Washington issued a statement affirming she would ‘comfortably’ make the game.
From a private box, along with Kelce’s mother, Donna, Swift chugged a beer and watched the Chiefs win a second-straight Super Bowl as more than 200 million TV viewers watched her.
