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Travis Kelce is giving credit where it’s due. After the Kansas City Chiefs tight end left a woman speechless while meeting fans recently, he joked that the source of his star power has less to do with him than it does who he’s dating: Taylor Swift.
In a video posted to TikTok Sunday (Aug. 4), Kelce strolls up to a group of fans and jokes, “What are you guys doing in my hallway?”

When the man filming the video says, “You just took my wife’s breath away, literally she just almost died,” the athlete simply shrugs. “The Taylor Swift effect,” he says as the fans laugh.

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“Unbelievable day at @Chiefs friends and family day,” reads the video’s caption.

Kelce has long been open about how his superstar girlfriend’s fame has rubbed off on him, even though he is regarded as one of the NFL’s most gifted offensive players. Earlier this year, for instance, he recalled being chased by airborne paparazzi at the Sydney Zoo while visiting Swift on her Eras Tour stops in Australia.

“They helicoptered us … well, not us — Taylor,” he said on his podcast New Heights at the time. “This is all because Taylor is the biggest and the best thing possible.”

In an interview with Good Morning America in June, Kelce explained how he’s stayed grounded despite the so-called Taylor Swift effect. “It might not come off like that when I’m playing football, but off the field, I just want to be a genuine person,” he said. “When you have good family and friends around you, it makes that aspect in life that much easier.”

Kelce and Swift are currently both busy with work. The 14-time Grammy winner is in the middle of her Eras Tour’s European leg — her next concerts are scheduled for this weekend in Vienna — while the Ohio native is about two weeks into Chiefs training camp ahead of the 2024-25 NFL season. The couple was last seen together in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, where Kelce enjoyed one of Swift’s performances before personally escorting her out of the backstage area after the show was over.

Watch Kelce joke with fans about the “Taylor Swift effect” below.

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Bill Maher made the bold choice of dissing Taylor Swift on his Club Random podcast this week, picking on everything from the 34-year-old pop star’s Eras Tour to her romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. 
While speaking to guest Haliey Welch — better known as the viral “Hawk Tuah” girl — on his Sunday (July 28) episode, the 68-year-old comedian was the first person to bring up Swift. “I liked her more when she was country,” he said. “I love ‘Sparks Fly.’ I love it.” 

That was pretty much where the flattery stopped, though. “I’m sure she’s a lovely person, but the whole thing with the football player … it just felt like 35 is a little old to be like, ‘My boyfriend’s a football player, and I wear his jersey to the game with his number on it,’” Maher continued, referencing the 14-time Grammy winner’s high-profile visits to Arrowhead Stadium during the 2023-24 NFL season. “Right? I mean, come on.” 

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The political commentator went on to say frankly that Kelce is “gonna dump her.” “With her, it’s like the Gatorade at the Super Bowl,” he added. “You know you’re gonna get dumped — you just don’t know when.”  

Welch then remarked that Swift’s next album would be next-level if a Tayvis breakup did occur — “It won’t be f–k John Mayer no more, it’ll be f–k Travis” — to which Maher questioned, “Is she still singing about [Mayer]?”  

“Her tour is the Eras Tour… it must’ve had the songs about all the people that she wrote songs about,” the Real Time host continued, agreeing with Welch that it’s “very tacky” for Swift to still be singing about her past exes. “You can’t control what the muse dictates to you — she’s a songwriter. I can’t fault her for that. But [her breakups] seem like such a recurrent theme.”  

That’s when Maher ended the Swift discussion with a pretty outdated joke: “At some point, you just want to say, maybe you should write a song called, ‘Maybe It’s Me.’”  

Billboard has reached out to Swift’s rep for comment. 

Though Maher apparently dislikes that the musician performs her older music on the Eras Tour, millions of Swifties would probably beg to differ. In 2023, the Eras Tour generated approximately $900 million in ticket sales — a number that’s no doubt significantly higher when factoring in the four months she’s been touring in 2024 since it was calculated.  

Swift has also been open about how quips about her dating life and songwriting topics affect her. When the Netflix series Ginny & Georgia included the line, “You go through men faster than Taylor Swift” in 2021, for instance, she was quick to put it on blast. 

“Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back,” she tweeted at the time. “How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse s–t as FuNnY.” 

As for the “Karma” singer’s relationship with Kelce, the couple appears to be doing just fine (although some of Maher’s comments do echo complaints from NFL fans who didn’t like seeing Swift on their TV screens during Chiefs games). Now going on a year of dating, they were most recently spotted at the star’s Eras show in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, July 18, cozying up next to each other as they exited the backstage area. 

Watch Maher discuss Swift below.

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