‘Taylor Swift Effect’ or not, the Chiefs missed the Playoffs and still owned NFL TV ratings

The Kansas City Chiefs went 6-11 and missed the playoffs, but they still acted like the league’s main character on TV. New NFL viewership figures, highlighted this week by outlets including Marca and the Daily Mail, showed Kansas City as the most-watched team during a season where ratings jumped.That is the part people cannot ignore. The results were ugly. The attention was not. Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce stayed at the center of the national broadcast calendar even when the Chiefs stopped being a Super Bowl story.The NFL’s data showed regular-season ratings rose 10% compared with 2024, with an average of 18.7 million viewers per game in 2025. The Chiefs showed up in four of the five most-watched games, which is not normal for a team that spent the year losing.The No. 1 draw came on Thanksgiving. The Chiefs vs. Dallas Cowboys game pulled 57.3 million viewers, and the Cowboys won 31-28. The Green Bay Packers vs. Detroit Lions matchup earlier that day ranked second at 47.7 million.Kansas City then filled out most of the rest of the top five. A rematch against the Philadelphia Eagles at Arrowhead Stadium averaged 33.8 million viewers. A Week 9 road game against the Buffalo Bills drew 30.9 million. A Week 11 loss to the Denver Broncos also landed in the top five, which says plenty on its own. Even when the Chiefs were not good, people still showed up.This is where Mahomes and Kelce matter. Mahomes is still one of the league’s biggest TV drivers, and Kelce is still part of the weekly conversation in a way few tight ends ever touch. The Chiefs have become a default watch, and the standings did not change that.A lot of fans tie Kansas City’s pull to the “Taylor Swift effect,” and the truth is simpler. The Chiefs are built for national TV because the league knows they deliver attention. Swift’s name keeps getting attached because Kelce’s profile lives outside football now, and because Swift’s influence keeps showing up in other lanes.One example floated this week: a separate report said a Sancerre wine sold out in the United States after a brief appearance in Swift’s docuseries, with Laurent Saget of Terres Blanches quoted saying, “Even if we had wanted to place one of our bottles in such a widely watched series, we couldn't have afforded it.” Another quote in that same report put the moment bluntly: “It's pretty mad. You can't put a price on it.” That is the kind of cultural gravity people are talking about when they say “Swift Effect.”The NFL does not need to pick one reason. It benefits either way. The league’s broader TV dominance stayed loud this season, with 89 of the top 100 broadcasts since the start of the regular season belonging to the NFL, per the same round of reporting on the league’s numbers.Now the postseason takes over the calendar. The Wild Card round opens with a three-day slate that the league clearly expects to carry the momentum, starting with the Los Angeles Rams at the Carolina Panthers, then the Packers vs. Chicago Bears in prime time, and a Sunday schedule that includes Buffalo at Jacksonville, Philadelphia hosting San Francisco, and the Rams at New England. The Chiefs will not be in it, but the NFL is still riding the same wave Kansas City helped build all season.