Pop superstar Taylor Swift has taken her seat at the Super Bowl to watch boyfriend Travis Kelce and his Kansas City Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49ers, providing a jolt of megawatt excitement to the Vegas blockbuster.
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Swift's arrival some two hours before kick-off sent an almost palpable frisson around the Allegiant Stadium and social media rapidly filled with pictures and video footage of the singer dressed in a black top, black jeans and with a red jacket slung over her shoulder walking through the bowels of the stadium with friends Blake Lively and Ice Spice.
A punishing travel schedule in which she has flown from Japan to the US and will then jet to Australia for tour commitments meant her presence was far from a foregone conclusion. When giant television screens showed Swift for the first time, a ripple of cheers went around the still-mostly empty stadium.
There was no hostile reaction from the vocal crowd when the cameras showed Swift hugging and swaying with Lively, which flashed up on screen as Post Malone sung America the Beautiful.
Swift has attended 12 Chiefs games since she began dating Kelce last year, boosting already sky-high NFL ratings.
The singer, who last weekend won the Grammy Award for album of the year for a record fourth time will not be in the US for long. She is scheduled to head to Australia for seven sold-out concerts, starting in Melbourne on February 16.
Swift, and her army of devotees known as "Swifties", brings a megawatt star power to the NFL and the Swift-Kelce love story marks a collision between two of the most powerful forces in American pop culture.
As shirt sales spike and viewership grows, the romance has brought millions of dollars of added brand value to the Chiefs and the NFL, according to research done by Apex Marketing Group.
"Taylor Swift's association with Travis Kelce and appearances at the Chiefs game has generated an equivalent brand value of $US331.5 million ($A507.7 million) for the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL" said Apex President Eric Smallwood to Reuters in an email.
Many fans in Las Vegas for the extravaganza were hoping she would turn up.
"More women need to watch NFL. We need to get more involved in sports. I think it's great ... so go, Taylor," Donna Collier, a 61-year-old football fan from Kentucky, laughed.
Australian Associated Press
