The year is 2026. Patrick Mahomes and a perfectly in-shape Travis Kelce are suiting up for another campaign with the Chiefs. Puka Nacua, fully healed after running through a glass window, will be hoping to play in the Rams’ season-opener next month sans any more controversy. Mike Vrabel and a Patriots team emerging from an offseason scandal eye a redemptive return to the Super Bowl. The through line across every narrative in NFL training camp so far? Be wary of what you see online.
That’s what the modern age of viral deepfakes, psyops and stealth marketing campaigns continues to teach everyone from the chronically plugged-in to the stubbornly A.I.-averse. So, when the NFL recently admitted that it’s trying to increase its exposure to women and girls through curated—and flirty—training camp content on social media, there’s naturally going to be a problem.
The NFL has been coordinating efforts to reach its female fans as a part of a far-reaching content campaign involving players’ WAGs (wives and girlfriends), according to a new report from Front Office Sports. One example is the widely-circulated video of Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert spending some personal time with fiancée Madison Beer at camp in early August. Bengals’ Joe Burrow and rumored romantic partner Olivia Ponton along with Giants’ Jaxson Dart and girlfriend Marissa Ayers have also felt more “visible” online than in past years, and as it turns out, that’s no coincidence.
“On the league and club level, we’ve engaged our players’ families and loved ones for years,” Ian Trombetta, the NFL’s SVP of social and influencer marketing, told FOS. “Whether it’s training camp, weekly practice or a major event like the Super Bowl, we look for authentic opportunities to highlight our players and the people who are part of their journey.
“The content is authentic, genuine and relatable, and that’s resonated strongly with women and young fans, who are key growth audiences for the NFL.”
The league’s efforts to “scale up” its female-focused content date back to the seismic, world-stopping origins of Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce. Everyone knows where they were in September 2023 when Swift was spotted in the Chiefs suite alongside Kelce’s mom Donna watching a game at Arrowhead. Those who couldn’t believe their eyes immediately logged onto X (formerly Twitter) where Adam Schefter confirmed it with a matter-of-fact sentence. This was, in fact, real.
Swift and Kelce are now happily married, but their whirlwind romance may serve as a cautionary tale to those in the NFL currently navigating the public sphere with their high-profile significant others. For years—and still, some are not convinced—“Tayvis” was seen singularly as a public relations powerhouse. Nothing more than a celebrity marketing ploy to get the Chiefs star more mainstream visibility while thrusting Swift and all her musical greatness back into the spotlight (at the time, she hadn’t released any new music since her tenth studio album, Midnights, in 2022).
“Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are in a PR relationship,” one NPR headline in 2023 read. “All the reasons why I believe Tayvis is a PR stunt” was the title of a nine-month-old Reddit thread. It even escalated to a point where Kelce’s representatives had to condemn a fabricated PR breakup contract that had surreptitiously surfaced online.
If it were so easy for cynics to believe Swift and Kelce were “just faking it,” the same applies to Herbert and Beer, or any other power couple in the league. In this dangerous era of misinformation, NFL’s concerted efforts to push more WAG content online, as noble as their intentions are, isn’t doing the players or their sweethearts any favors.
Scrutiny is, of course, inevitable when you’re a starting NFL quarterback or a Grammy-nominated singer. Beer, 27, boasts 60 million followers on Instagram and TikTok combined, along with over 15.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Ponton is a former Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model. Ayers is an influencer who started modeling as a ring card girl for Jake Paul’s boxing company.
It can’t be lost on the NFL that the trio are all Gen-Z and all popular content creators, making it that much easier for the league’s social team to plaster their faces across platforms and promote the kind of lovey-dovey material more often associated with gossipy celebrity sites. It’s exactly what influencers live for. In late July, the NFL’s post of Herbert and Beer’s engagement racked up over half a million likes on Instagram and almost two million on TikTok, far surpassing any other post that month or this offseason, for that matter.
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