Are Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce the Next Victoria & David Beckham?
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This year’s Super Bowl might even top last year’s record viewership if Swifties set their TV sets to CBS on Sunday night. Many of Taylor Swift’s millions of fans will undoubtedly tune in to the big game to catch a glimpse of the pop star, who’s expected to attend the 49ers-vs.-Chiefs showdown to support boyfriend Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Chiefs.
Does this particular love story — a pop star and a football player falling for one another under the glare of arena floodlights and the scrutiny of tabloid reporters — feel like history repeating? Think back to the late 1990s and the much-hyped romance between Spice Girls singer Victoria Beckham (née Adams) and association footballer David Beckham. And judging by the similarities listed below, we’d say the Beckhams know Swift and Kelce’s situation “All Too Well.”
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are astrological matches, as are the Beckhams.
Swift is a Sagittarius Sun with a Cancer Moon, while Kelce is a Libra Sun with a Sagittarius Moon — and celebrity astrologer Kyle Thomas told People in September 2023 that the duo’s astrological compatibility is 9 out of 10. Swift and Kelce “possess a karmic entanglement that makes them feel familiar to one another,” Thomas added. “They can easily be seen as an ideal couple for their generation, somewhat of a king and a queen of an era.”
Their predecessors also have their stars aligned, so to speak. In a February 2022 post for the New York Post, Thomas said that the Beckhams are “super cosmically compatible” in a union “that is blessed with eternal growth.” He gave Victoria and David a compatibility rating of 8 out of 10.
Kelce had his heart set on meeting Swift, just as David Beckham was determined to meet Victoria.
When he attended one of Swift’s Eras Tour concerts in Kansas City, Kelce was ready to give the Grammy winner a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it, as he revealed on his New Heights podcast the following month. “I was disappointed that she doesn’t talk before or after her shows because she has to save her voice for the 44 songs that she sings,” he said, per TODAY.com. “So I was a little butthurt I didn’t get to hand her one of the bracelets I made for her. … I wanted to give Taylor Swift one with my number on it.”
In the Netflix documentary Beckham, David recalled telling teammate Gary Neville that he was going to marry Victoria one day as they watched her on TV. “[I said] ‘See that one there? I’m going to marry that one,’” David remembered. “And we were laughing and joking, and I’m like, ‘No, I’m going to marry that one — the posh one, in the black dress.’”
Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images
Both couples have been going the distance — quite literally.
In both relationships, face-to-face time seems to be worth any amount of travel. In their early days, David Beckham was “like an addict” when it came to Victoria, Neville said in Beckham (per Bustle). “I knew the lengths [David] was going to see Victoria,” he told the documentarians. “He would drive four hours to spend 20 minutes with her.”
Meanwhile, Swift is expected to attend Super Bowl LVIII and to rush from a concert in Tokyo, across the Pacific, and into Las Vegas to watch the NFL championship game. Associated Press journalists spied someone entering the private jet area — shielded by four to five entourage members with large umbrellas — at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on Saturday night.
Victoria Beckham and Taylor Swift have been targeted by paparazzi and sports fans alike.
Both Victoria Beckham and Swift have had difficulty keeping anything about their private life private, since photographers — and fans armed with cell phone cameras — are never far away. But sports fans have also hounded both women. In Beckham, the woman formerly known as Posh Spice recalled hearing football fans taunting her with an explicit chant about her sex life. “75,000 people singing that, it’s embarrassing, it’s hurtful,” she said in the doc, per Daily Mail.
These days, Swift is an “Anti-Hero” for some American football fans, who rage online about her appearances at football games. “Most of them, admittedly, don’t know anything about [Swift],” Jamie Skerski, an associate teaching professor in communications at the University of Colorado Boulder, told KUSA-TV earlier this month. “But they just don’t get it, and they’re sort of offended by her existence, even if it’s only for 25 seconds in a broadcast that they have been conditioned to think is for them.”
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Victoria Beckham changed gears after becoming famous, and Kelce might do the same.
After leaving her claim to fame behind, Victoria Beckham found a new calling, transitioning from a career in music to one in fashion design. “I’ve been doing fashion longer than I did music,” she observed in a March 2023 CNN Style interview.
Kelce might also want a second act, telling reporters earlier this month he might pursue acting after his football career is done. “I know there’s definitely Hollywood talks out there. … I’ll probably have a lot of those meetings and conversations when it is all said and done,” he said, per the New York Post.
And David Beckham has given advice to the younger couple.
David Beckham weighed in on Swift’s romance with Kelce in an October 2023 interview with People, pointing out that there’s “a lot of noise” around the pop star at the moment. “Whatever she does and whoever she’s with, as long as she’s happy, that’s the most important thing,” he said.
The athlete had advice for his and Victoria’s younger counterparts, saying they should prioritize their one-on-one time. “It’s the same with me and Victoria. We’ve been together now 26 years, almost three decades,” he added. “We’ve got amazing kids, we’ve built businesses, but we make time for each other.”
With any luck, Swift and Kelce will have a chance to do the same after Sunday night.
Super Bowl LVIII, Sunday, February 11, 6/5c, CBS
