Super Bowl LVIII: Taylor Swift, targeted ads, and the bizarre conspiracy theories

There is no bigger story this week than our collective anticipation for the biggest game in American Football. This Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs are playing the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 58 — stylized as Super Bowl LVIII

While R&B fans are excited to watch Usher perform the hit songs of their youth during the halftime show, a lot of people are hoping for Taylor Swift to make an appearance. 

Swift being such a mainstay of this NFL season, is changing the demographics of who watches football — and might influence who advertisers are trying to target.

Writers and culture critics Garvia Bailey, Anne T. Donahue and Jackson Weaver join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to chat about Taylor Swift, Super Bowl ads, and the crazy conspiracy theories surrounding Swift and Travis Kelce.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus a chat on Tracy Chapman's post-Grammys popularity, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Jackson, you're a lifelong football fan. You've been doing this a long time. How does the energy around this Super Bowl feel different than other years? 

Jackson: The NFL is the biggest sports league by revenue in the world. So, it's always a big thing and it's always a big event. I started playing football when I was about five. So, I never really had a time in my life where I didn't know how it works … But taking a step back, football is a very complicated sport where everyone is basically playing a different sport. 

But for Swifties — I know we have one in the conversation here — this gives a lot of people a         reason to actually get committed to actually learning. If you like scrolling TikTok, you have people explaining what those yellow lines on the field are and why that guy is waving his hand in the air when somebody kicks the ball. All these hyper-specific things are so confusing that you don't really want to even go through the effort of figuring out and learning. But now, there's a reason to dive in. But also, if you look at the NFL, almost any time it's been in the news for the past two decades, it's for something horrible. 

Elamin: What sort of shifts are we seeing in terms of the demographics of who is paying attention to the NFL and the Super Bowl?

Garvia: I think the NFL has a very strong female fan base. Let's just get that out of the way. They have an extremely devoted female fan base, like nearly 50 per cent of viewers. 

These women in their Bears outfits are ready to actually watch the game and know football. That being said, the NFL has to make a concerted effort to clean up what has been the stories around the NFL as of late, especially when it comes to women. Domestic violence is a kind of what pops into your head when you think of the NFL. I think times have changed. They have done their best to court women. They have something like almost 300 women in coaching and or administration — high level positions in the NFL. 

I disagree with Jackson that all of a sudden people are like, "How does this thing work?" Women are watching this going, "When are they going to show TayTay?"

Elamin: Anne, what do you make of this shift? What do you make of who is getting to speak in these ads? 

Anne: I think it's strange and a little condescending that just because women are going to be watching, they run makeup ads. Quick, put the makeup ads on. We wanted to see famous people do weird things for 30 seconds because they make so much money. And we're like, why? That it's very strange that all the Taylor Swift attention suddenly means we need this boom of consumerist culture. It was always there. 

Elamin: Can you talk about some of the insane conspiracy theories that we keep hearing and why they're so popular? 

Jackson: There was this Canadian conspiracy where some B.C. local radio station had accidentally published a headline that confirmed a Kansas City Chiefs' win a minute before they actually did. And all the comments were like, "Those newsroom writers know way ahead of time. Taylor Swift is now tied to the Kansas City Chiefs. So if the Kansas Chiefs win, then Taylor will have the cultural cachet to endorse Biden."

If I knew who is going to win the Super Bowl, I would be saying it right now. I do not have a poker face. 

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman