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Taylor Swift smiles during an NFL game as a new poll shows fans want her for the Super Bowl 61 halftime show.
Amid an ongoing controversy over which performer should headline the Super Bowl 61 halftime show in Los Angeles, a new poll released this week shows a clear favorite among NFL fans — Taylor Swift.
The poll of 3,008 NFL fans was conducted in early January but released this week amid reports that the global pop music megastar has already been rejected by Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, co-founder and majority owner of Roc Nation, the promotional company that has been in charge of the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019.
Swift has been highly visible among NFL fans since she began dating Kansas City Chiefs future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce in 2023. The couple became engaged last August and reportedly plan their wedding for later this year.
The poll, conducted by a professional research firm and released by Vegas Insider, showed that NFL fans have a wide variety of halftime performers they would like to see at Super Bowl 61, which will be played on Feb. 14, 2027 — Valentine’s Day — at SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood.
But Swift leads the field with 7.6% preferring her over any of the other 19 music stars in the poll. According to the poll’s crosstabs, published by Vegas Insider, Swift owes her lead primarily to older NFL fans. Respondents in the 45-54 age group made Swift their top choice, with 8% selecting the 14-time Grammy winner. Fans age 55 and above favored Swift even more heavily, at 11%.
Jay-Z Rejection Controversy
But fan-favorite or not, according to recent reports, Taylor Swift will not perform at the next Super Bowl halftime show because she does not “fit the vision” held by Jay-Z for the direction of upcoming Super Bowl performances.
“The cultural megaphone Jay-Z has built through the halftime show requires artists who push conversations forward, not performers who simply confirm what audiences already know they love,” wrote Tega Egwabor, a politics and culture analyst for Rolling Out. “Swift, for all her commercial dominance, does not fit that framework.”
Rolling Out describes itself as “a community of multi-hyphenate storytellers that live the culture we report on. We were born out of a need for Black culture to see authentic and uplifting depictions of itself.”
According to entertainment industry insider Rob Shuter, Jay-Z has been emboldened by the success — a reported 125 million viewers — of his decision to choose Puerto Rican, Spanish-language star Bad Bunny for Super Bowl 60, played on Feb. 8, despite a political firestorm around the choice.
The Roc Nation chief is determined that future Super Bowl halftime shows will be “culture-defining” rather than “safe,” which is how Jay-Z sees Swift, according to Shuter’s report.
Younger NFL Fans Prefer Atlanta-Based Rapper
The Vegas Insider poll did contain some surprises for Swift. In the 35-44 age demographic she tied with Atlanta-based rapper Savage 21 (given name: Shéyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph) at 5%, and the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups clearly preferred the rapper, giving him 10% and 9%, respectively.
Swift, however, was the clear favorite among both men and women across age groups, with each giving her 7.6% of their selections. Among men, 78-year-old music icon Elton John was the second preference at 5.3%. But among women, 37-year-old British vocalist Adele placed second with 5.46%.
Swift was the favorite of eight out of the 32 NFL team fan bases, 25%, including the Chiefs, whose fans see her attending home games to watch Kelce play on a regular basis.
Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin
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