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During the first half of Sunday’s Super Bowl, the Jumbotron at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas briefly cut away from the action on the field to show Taylor Swift chugging a beer in her luxury suite overlooking the stadium.
在周日的超级碗上半场,拉斯维加斯的Allegiant 体育场的大屏幕短暂地从球场上的比赛画面切换到泰勒•斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)在她的豪华包厢里畅饮啤酒的画面。
Swift was there, of course, to cheer on her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his Kansas City Chiefs, who won their second consecutive National Football League championship in dramatic extra time.
当然,斯威夫特在场是为她的男友特拉维斯•凯尔斯(Travis Kelce)和他的堪萨斯城酋长队(Kansas City Chiefs)加油助威,他们在激动人心的加时赛中赢得了连续第二个国家橄榄球联盟(National Football League)冠军。
But the biggest winner of the evening was the NFL, by all measures the single greatest unifying live entertainment behemoth in the US. The league was given a tremendous gift when Swift began attending fixtures this year: ticket sales for some Chiefs games nearly tripled, and overall NFL ratings rose 7 per cent for the 2023 season.
但是当晚最大的赢家是美国国家橄榄球联盟(NFL),从各个方面来看,美国国家橄榄球联盟是美国最伟大的统一现场娱乐巨头。当斯威夫特开始到现场观看今年的比赛时,这个联盟得到了一份巨大的礼物:一些堪萨斯城酋长队的比赛门票销售额几乎翻了两番,而整个2023赛季的美国国家橄榄球联盟收视率上升了7%。
It’s great news for the NFL, but the most powerful sports league in the richest country in the world should not be dependent upon the whims of a pop star’s social life to develop a deeper relationship with female fans.
这对于美国国家橄榄球联盟来说是个好消息,但是作为世界上最富有的国家中最强大的体育联盟,它不应该依赖于一位流行歌星的社交生活来与女性球迷建立更深入的关系。
The millions of young women in Swift’s fan base are of great benefit to the NFL: of the roughly 58 per cent of Americans who watch football each week, three-quarters are men over 50, according to a 2023 study by SponsorPulse.
斯威夫特的数百万年轻女性粉丝对美国国家橄榄球联盟来说是巨大的利益:根据SponsorPulse 2023年的一项研究,每周观看橄榄球比赛的美国人中,大约58%是男性,其中四分之三年龄超过50岁。
Despite conspiracy rumours to the contrary, NFL leaders have admitted that the Taylor television traffic is just a happy accident. Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, told reporters last week that the NFL wasn’t clever enough to devise the Swift-Kelce romance even if they tried.
尽管有关阴谋的谣言不绝于耳,美国国家橄榄球联盟的领导人承认泰勒带来的电视流量只是一个巧合。该联盟的主席罗杰•古德尔(Roger Goodell)上周告诉记者,即使他们尝试,美国国家橄榄球联盟也不够聪明来设计斯威夫特-凯尔斯的恋情。
“I don’t think I’m that good of a scripter, or anybody on our staff,” he said. “Taylor is obviously a dynamo. Everything she touches, there are people following, so we count ourselves fortunate, we welcome it.”
“我不认为我是一个很好的编剧,或者我们团队中的任何人,”他说。“泰勒显然是一个活力四溢的人。她触碰的一切都有人追随,所以我们觉得很幸运,我们欢迎这一切。”
Sports fans who arrived in Las Vegas last week ahead of the Super Bowl shared with me their reflections on what’s working — and not — for female audiences. Across the board, they said, they enjoy the interpersonal stories in sport.
上周抵达拉斯维加斯参加超级碗(Super Bowl)的体育迷与我分享了他们对于女性观众的感受,他们一致表示,他们喜欢体育运动中的人际故事。
“It’s all about how the team is functioning together,” says Lori Haddock, 55, a San Francisco 49ers fan from Omaha. “Football is a family thing to do . . . especially if you have something that you can watch together, that is so competitive and so fun.”
“关键在于团队的协作。”来自奥马哈的旧金山49人的球迷洛里•哈多克(Lori Haddock)说道。“橄榄球是一项全家人一起做的事情...尤其是如果你有一些可以一起观看的东西,那就是如此具有竞争力和乐趣。”
Like Swift, Haddock got into football through the relationships in her life: first watching Kansas City Chiefs games growing up with her father, and later switching allegiances to the 49ers when she met her husband. She says her daughter never caught the football bug growing up, but now aged 28, she’s recently embraced watching the sport with her partner.
和斯威夫特一样,哈多克通过她生活中的人际关系接触到橄榄球:首先是和父亲一起观看堪萨斯城酋长队的比赛,后来在遇到丈夫后改为支持49人队。她说她的女儿在成长过程中从未对橄榄球产生兴趣,但现在28岁的她最近开始和她的伴侣一起观看这项运动。
Kiah Cresser, 27, and Ben Mathiou, 28, travelled to Vegas from Australia’s Gold Coast to attend their first Super Bowl after Mathiou, a professional rugby player, scored tickets a year ago. Cresser, dressed fashionably in a trenchcoat and knitted caramel top, tells me she wasn’t much of a sports fan until the Swift-Kelce relationship blossomed. “It’s a love story, how can you resist that?” she says.
27岁的凯亚•克雷瑟(Kiah Cresser)和28岁的本•马蒂欧(Ben Mathiou)从澳大利亚的黄金海岸(Gold Coast)来到拉斯维加斯参加他们的第一次超级碗。一年前,作为职业橄榄球运动员的马蒂欧买到了门票。克雷瑟穿着时尚的风衣和编织的焦糖色上衣,告诉我她之前并不是一个很热衷于体育的粉丝,直到斯威夫特-凯尔斯的关系开始发展。“这是一个爱情故事,你怎么能抵挡得住呢?”她说。
As a result, she consumes NFL stories on TikTok, and says she will probably stay invested in the Chiefs regardless of whether Swift and Kelce stay together. Her primary interest, she says, is the cast of characters in and around the game, including quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany. “It’s not really anything that the NFL is doing specifically,” she adds.
因此,她在TikTok上关注美国国家橄榄球联盟的故事,并表示无论斯威夫特和凯尔斯是否在一起,她都可能继续支持堪萨斯城酋长队。她说,她主要关注比赛中和周围的角色,包括四分卫帕特里克•马洪斯和他的妻子布列塔尼。“这与美国国家橄榄球联盟特别做的事情无关,”她补充道。
To be sure, the league is making an effort to develop fan interest among women; last year, flag football — a non-tackle version of the game open to all genders — was introduced as a high school sport in the state of California, in advance of the sport’s inclusion in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, thanks to some persuasion by the NFL. If women have an opportunity to play the game, the thinking goes, it will further endear football to them for life.
可以肯定的是,联盟正在努力培养女性球迷的兴趣;去年,在美国国家橄榄球联盟的一些劝说下,在2028年洛杉矶夏季奥运会之前,腰旗橄榄球(一种对所有性别开放的不允许身体冲撞版本的比赛)在加利福尼亚州被引入为一项高中运动。人们认为,如果女性有机会踢橄榄球,这将进一步使橄榄球终身受到她们的喜爱。
Such a strategy may pay off in the long run. In the meantime, American football is relying on images of Swift having the time of her life in her stadium box, high-fiving family members and cheering with her girlfriends. The message is a quietly revelatory one for some women: this is a space for your entertainment, too.
这样的策略从长远来看可能会取得成功。与此同时,橄榄球依靠斯威夫特在她的包厢里尽情享受时光、与家人击掌、与闺蜜们欢呼的形象。这条信息对一些女性来说是一条悄悄的启示:这也是一个娱乐的空间。