Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s budding love story has netted big gains for the NFL over the past few months. Her eagerly anticipated appearances at Kansas City Chiefs games (both at home and on the road) helped to broaden the appeal of professional football, introducing the sport to a fandom of girls and young women who may not have felt they were the target audience for a national pastime soaked in beer and testosterone. But while you can certainly put a number on the singer’s influence on the NFL — according to the analytics firm Apex Marketing Group, Swift’s appearances at games have generated $331.5 million in equivalent brand value for the league — Swift’s celebrity has also helped to spur innovation aimed specifically at female fans who’ve been begging for a more stylish way to support their teams for years.
Kristin Juszczyk is the self-taught fashion designer and wife to San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk who began her fashion influencer journey by crafting the couple’s Halloween costumes. She’s been sewing her own game-day fits for years and helping celebrity friends level up their look with reworked jerseys and vintage tees. As they say, “necessity is the mother of invention.”
“My husband has been playing in the NFL for ten years. After about year six, I started getting bored of wearing the same three t-shirts on rotation. I started playing around with a few ideas that I had and quickly realized that I had a knack for it,” Juszczyk recently told E! News. “It felt incredibly rewarding transforming something that was heading to the donation pile, into something that felt completely new.”
As you surely know, it was a bespoke puffer jacket that Juszczyk created to keep Swift warm during the Chiefs frigid face-off with the Miami Dolphins that put her DIY designs to the forefront of NFL-inspired apparel, building on co-signs from the likes of Simone Biles, Taylor Lautner, Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson, and Brittany Mahomes. It also, apparently moved an already-in-the-works licensing deal with the NFL across the finish line.
This new deal, which was announced Tuesday, will allow Juszczyk to officially use team logos in her designs. Theoretically, that means that Juszczyk can begin bringing the spirit of her custom pieces to the masses if she so chooses. While the exact impact of this deal is still being sorted out, at minimum, it means the league is paying attention to the Taylor Swift effect and to an audience that demands to have their tastes for both football and original, IG-worthy apparel respected.
