What happens when you add a Rock Star with the biggest audience in the world to a Superbowl football game? Media academics at Brock are thinking about that

By Pepper Parr

February 8^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

SuperBowl LVIII

Celebrity – some will remember when the Beattles attracted this kind of  attention.

Big deal for American football fans that has become a big big deal for the Swifties in the world.

Swifties are the Taylor Swift fans – tens of millions of them

Super Bowl LVIII will feature the Kansas City Chiefs against the San Francisco 49ers. On Sunday February 11^th.

This is the second time the Chiefs and 49ers have matched up in a Super Bowl, previously meeting in Super Bowl LIV at the end of the 2019 season. Kansas City won that game,

The Swifties being the moniker for the Taylor Swift fans. What brings football and a Rock Star together is Travis Kelce, plays with the Kansas City Chiefs and is the current Swift boyfriend.  Kelce a Tight End and considered to be one of the best players in that position. –

When Swift changed some pictures on her Instagram page there was an immediate jump in the readership by more than 650,000 in a single day.

When Kelce does well on the football field the Swifties in the crowd go bananas.

The people who follow this stuff expect to see millions of people gambling on the game in real time.

Taylor Swift, the woman with the largest personal audience the world has ever seen.

What does Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl mean to media?

What will this do to the numbers?

One prediction is for 200 million people watching the football game, with 140 million of them in North America – the rest spread around the world.

Olan Scott, a professor at Brock University teaches in the Faculty of Sports Management where numbers like this are part of some of the curriculum. He comments that Taylor Swift has the largest audience the world has ever seen.

What people follow media are now realizing is that while traditional newspapers are not just in decline, except for some major national newspapers there isn’t all that much left.  Journalism isn’t a career choice the way it was in the Watergate days.

Politically the Americans are split between a close to rabid core that believes a presidential candidate had the last election stolen from him.  That candidate has so many court cases in which he is defending himself against a possible prison sentence.

At a time when balanced news is essential there are organizations offering news that is intended to mislead.

We now have the Chinese and the Russians actively sowing seeds of discontent and totally false news to a public that has yet to learn to differentiate and question what is being published.  The scope of what is taking place could put the western world as we know it at serious risk – democracy itself is at risk.

Olan Scott, a former Australian surfer earned a doctorate and now teaches Sports Management at Brock University.

What Olan Scott, a former Australian surfer who moved into the academic world is doing with his students who are studying sports management is very much a part of what the public needs – a better understanding of the celebrity phenomena and at the same time learn how celebrity is just one part of the changes taking place.

While we live lives that are local for the most part – what is going on around us is much more than local.  What happens in Ukraine makes a difference in the home town – number of immigrants xxx

Brock University currently has one faculty operating in the city.  Their Teacher Education program is operating in one of the high schools that was closed several years ago and are expected to take up residence in the former Bateman High School that is being converted into a Community centre that will include the Brock Teacher Education program.

What was once a high school got upgraded to a combined University operation and a large community hub that will include a much bigger library and sports facilities that will include three gymnasium and a swimming pool.

Interesting that Brock is doing more media work in Burlington than McMaster University that has a campus on the South Service Road.  The Brock University leadership has done meet and greet presentations with the Chamber of Commerce membership.