The music superstar’s appearance on ‘New Heights’ alongside boyfriend and Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce and brother Jason Kelce set records for viewership.
Wednesday’s podcast set a record on YouTube for concurrent viewers – the number of individual people watching a live stream at the same time – with a peak of 1.3 million. As of Friday evening, the episode has surpassed 15 million views.
The live stream crashed nearly two hours in with more than 1 million people watching as she answered more questions about her 12th album ‘The Life of a Showgirl.’ She revealed the album art on the podcast and went into detail with the Kelce brothers about what went into the album as well as featured guest artists.
Per Front Office Sports, people are catching parts of the episode on other platforms, too. Clips from the show have totaled more than 61 million views on X, 34.5 million on TikTok and 379 million on Instagram.
The ‘New Heights’ YouTube channel has also seen more than 400,000 new subscribers since the episode went live. The show’s Instagram page surpassed 3 million followers as well.
Swift’s appearance with the Kelce brothers on ‘New Heights,’ was initially teased on Monday, Aug. 11, with a promo announcing Swift’s new album. The ‘New Heights’ podcast moved up to No. 1 on the Apple podcast charts before the episode became available.
Swift, in a subsequent clip released in the lead-up to the episode’s debut, also poked fun at ‘male sports fans’ for showing up on the Kelces’ podcast given the reception she has received at times for her appearances at Chiefs games.
‘I think we all know that if there’s one thing that male sports fans want to see in their spaces and on their screens, it’s more of me,’ Swift joked.
Kelce admitted in a recent GQ cover story that his forays into Hollywood and entertainment might have played a role in why his production ‘slipped’ the past two seasons. He had a cameo role in ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ and one season as host of Amazon Prime Video’s game show, ‘Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?’ Swift, Kelce said, is more aligned with his goal of a bounce back year and another Super Bowl title with the Chiefs. Jason Kelce even introduced Swift to the ‘New Heights’ audience as having won one Super Bowl alongside his younger brother.
‘I sort of made her a football fan,’ Travis Kelce told GQ. ‘She is the most engulfed fan now. She knows what the injury reports look like. She understands what special situations are, third and short – all these things because she just naturally loves to hear about my job.’
