Fact-Check

The Verdict False

This is a recurring false claim on Facebook and as no news websites have reported on such a ban, we have rated it false.

The claim

A viral Facebook post claims there is bad blood between Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt and pop superstar Taylor Swift.

Hunt allegedly “officially banned” Swift from attending future Chiefs games and called her the team’s “BIGGEST DISTRACTION.”

Swift has officially dated Kansas City Chiefs’ star player Travis Kelce since September 2023, and her regular attendance at their games sparked a media frenzy and outrage among some NFL fans, They claimed her presence was a distraction and called for her to be banned from the league.

According to the Facebook post, which was made by a page dedicated to “everything about Taylor Swift,” the decision to ban Swift “came on the heels of the Chiefs’ disappointing defeat to the Jacksonville Jaguars in their first preseason game.”

The post concludes, “The shocking announcement has left fans and the sports world buzzing, with many NFL and Swift’s Fans questioning the reasoning behind such a drastic action.”

The Facebook post (archived here) has gained over 1,800 comments and has been shared 75 times in less than a week, and a screenshot of the post on X (archived here) has been viewed 93,900 times in two days.

However, Logically Facts found that neither fans nor the sports world are buzzing with shock – as Swift hasn’t been banned at all.

What we found

While the Facebook post claims the news broke on Fox News, a Google search on the news site for articles published between August 1 and August 23 yields no such results.

A Google search result using the keywords “Taylor Swift,” “banned,” and “Kansas City Chiefs” also doesn’t show any results that match the viral claim. As no credible news sites have reported on this story, there is no solid evidence proving this is true.

Furthermore, it would make very little financial sense for the Chiefs to ban Swift. In an interview with Bloomberg on August 14, Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt spoke favorably about Swift and Kelce’s love story, claiming that her mere presence at the games has contributed to a 30 percent boost in the team’s fan base. After she was first identified at one of the Chiefs games, sales of Kelce’s red jersey replica jumped by 400 percent, and the “Swift effect” is also said to have boosted the brand value of the NFL and the Chiefs by $331 million.

Despite this, social media claims about an alleged “Taylor Swift ban” have appeared repeatedly over 2024.

In late January, a story with the headline “NFL Reportedly Considering Banning Taylor Swift from Super Bowl, “We’re Tired of Her’” went viral on Facebook. This, Forbes reported, originated from a satirical website.

Screenshot of Facebook post, modified by Logically Facts, with viral headline – archived here).

In April, another headline went viral on Facebook: “Taylor Swift Now Banned From All Future NFL Games ‘She’s Too Much Toxic and Distracting,'” it said. A closer inspection by Reuters found no such announcements on the NFL website and tracked the headline back to a satirical news site.

Screenshot of Facebook post, modified by Logically Facts, with viral headline – archived here)

In early June, another Facebook post went viral, claiming that nearly all of the Kansas City Chiefs players signed a petition to ban Swift from their home games. While some of the people in the comments believed the petition was real, it was published by a satirical Facebook page and did not reflect actual events.

Screenshot of Facebook post, modified by Logically Facts, with viral headline – archived here)

Later the same month, the supposed ban went viral again: “BREAKING: Candace Owens vows to have Taylor Swift banned from the next NFL season, ‘she’s awfully woke,'” a Facebook post read. PolitiFact found that this originated from a fake news page.

Screenshot of Facebook post (modified by Logically Facts) with viral headline (archived here).

And now, in August, there’s this – which, in the absence of credible evidence, we’re just gonna have to add to the list of Swift-related misinformation and… shake it off.

The verdict

This is a recurring false claim on Facebook, and as no news websites have reported on such a ban, we have rated it false.

To read more about why there’s so much misinformation about Taylor Swift, please see Logically Facts’ long-form.