The most anticipated sports podcast episode in history ended up giving the world’s biggest pop star bragging rights over the President of the United States.
Wednesday night saw a special release of the ‘New Heights’ podcast where co-host and Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce brought on his pop superstar girlfriend, Taylor Swift.
Teasers leading up to the episode revealed that Swift would be unveiling the cover and release date for her highly-anticipated 12th album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl’.
Swifties flocked in droves to listen to the episode live – breaking the record for the most-watched live-streamed podcast in YouTube’s history at 1.3million viewers.
It shattered the previous mark – held by ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ when the eponymous host brought on then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
The stream was so popular that Swifties ended up crashing the YouTube stream at the 1 hour, 44 minute mark.
Taylor Swift’s appearance on Travis and Jason Kelce’s New Heights podcast broke the record for the most-watched YouTube livestream of a podcast episode when it dropped Wednesday
The episode surpassed a mark previously set when Donald Trump went on Joe Rogan’s show
‘Shoutout all the 92%ers and Swifties for actually helping us break the internet,’ the New Heights X account said after the stream had concluded.
Jason Kelce, the former Philadelphia Eagles center and co-host, referenced Swift’s love of the number 13 by tweeting, ‘1.3million views is the epitome of numerology.’
Not only that, but the New Heights YouTube channel saw a spike in subscriber numbers.
The channel began at 2.85million subs before the episode began. At the time of publishing, the subscriber count sits at 2.97million.
While it did break the live-viewership record, it still has some ways to go to catch up to the 24-hour viewer count that the Trump episode of Rogan had.
In the first 24-hours of that episode, Rogan’s channel had 26million views. At the time of publishing, the YouTube video of the New Heights show has 9.5million in the first 14 hours (with 6million views coming in the first five hours).
But breaking one record held by Trump is sure to be a feather in Swift’s cap after she endorsed Democrat nominee and former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
Trump has gone on the offensive against Swift in the past, calling her ‘no longer hot’ after the endorsement of Harris and mocking her for being booed at Super Bowl LIX.
While Taylor and Travis have that record, it’s still a ways off the 26million views that then-candidate Trump got when going on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ last year
Not only does this two-hour conversation mark a major moment for the show, it also is a perfect full-circle moment for Travis and Taylor.
Travis previously mentioned in July 2023 how he’d like to have Swift on the show and how he tried giving her a friendship bracelet at a concert in Kansas City, but that he wasn’t able to meet her.
Cut to now. Travis and Taylor have been the definitive storyline in the NFL over the last two years, with the sport seeing a massive spike in female audience in that time.
On the episode, Swift mentioned how important that July 2023 episode was to their eventual meeting.
‘This kind of felt more like I was in an ’80s John Hughes movie,’ Swift said. ‘He was just like standing outside of my window with a boom box just being like, “I want to date you. Do you want to go on a date with me? I made you a friendship bracelet. Do you want to date me?”‘
She continued, ‘This is sort of what I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager.’
Kelce added, ‘And I was sitting there at the Eras tour listening to every single one of those songs, like, I know what she wants me to do!’
He continued, ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world,’ while Swift said her man is ‘a vibe booster in everyone’s life that he’s in. He’s like a human exclamation point.’
On the pod, Swift revealed the cover and reveal date for her 12th album ‘The Life of a Showgirl’
Swift’s album announcement was the biggest draw for the show – with the ‘Cruel Summer’ singer confirming the October 3 release for ‘The Life of a Showgirl’.
She added that there will not be any extra songs on the album – which is being produced by Swedish hitmaker Max Martin and his collaborator Shellback.
The pair helped make some of Swift’s biggest hits – including ‘Style’, ‘Shake It Off’ and ‘Blank Space’ of her multi-Grammy winning 2014 album ‘1989’.
Unlike previous albums, Swift said there would not be any hidden tracks for ‘Showgirl’.
However, fans are sure to be entertained – with the tracklist released and revealing that fellow pop star Sabrina Carpenter will feature on the title track.
