According to an NFL VP, Taylor Swift had no influence on the league’s 2024 regular season scheduling.

According to an NFL VP, Taylor Swift had no influence on the league’s 2024 regular season scheduling.

Taylor Swift’s global dominance is such that the NFL, which will gladly outperform other sports on previously sacred days — the NBA on Christmas Day and college football on Black Friday — must consider Swift’s return to the United States to conclude her “Eras Tour.” On a conference call last week, NFL vice president of broadcast planning Mike North stated that the league needed to consider her U.S. tour dates while putting together the 2024 season schedule, according to Fox Sports. There’s no way a star of her caliber would reschedule her tour for anything less than natural calamity.

“She [Swift] had a bigger influence on my niece Gabby’s bat mitzvah last weekend — it was Gabby’s version so there was a lot of Taylor being played at the bat mitzvah. … She had a bigger influence on the bat mitzvah than she had on our schedule,” North said on “The Adam Schefter Podcast.” Swift is set to have concerts at Hard Rock Stadium, the home of the Miami Dolphins, three days in a row from Friday Oct. 18 through Sunday Oct. 20. She will then travel to New Orleans for three consecutive days of shows at the Caesars Superdome, the New Orleans Saints’ home field, from Friday Oct. 25 through Sunday Oct. 27. The final leg of her U.S. return wraps up at Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Indianapolis Colts, from Friday Nov. 1 through Sunday Nov. 3.

The NFL made sure to send Miami north to Indianapolis to play the Colts in Week 7 (Sunday, Oct. 20), New Orleans out west to Los Angeles to play the Chargers in Week 8 (Sunday, Oct. 27) and Indianapolis northwest to Minnesota to face the Vikings in Week 9 (Sunday, Nov. 3).

 

“Look, we know she is touring still, right? So there’s a tour date in Miami, Indianapolis, and one more maybe, New Orleans or something like that,” North said. “When those teams submitted their scheduling forms at the start, they said, ‘Hey, here’s everything we want: open at home, close at home, midseason bye, don’t give us a three-game road trip.’ All the things they normally say, and also ‘Our stadium’s hopefully not available to you NFL in Week 8 because we have an event going on.

“Obviously we knew it was a Taylor Swift concert. As best we could, we try to accommodate whether it’s Taylor Swift or Green Day or Billy Joel or Ed Sheeran or Pink or Lady Gaga or anybody else out on tour,” North continued. “We know these buildings are used for things other than NFL football. To the extent that the Dolphins, the Saints and the Colts each had one weekend this year where they had hoped to be on the road or [on] bye, Taylor Swift impacted the NFL schedule.”

Swift will be in Toronto from November 14 to 16 and November 21 to 23 to perform at the Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball. Coincidentally, the NFL has scheduled the two-time Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs to play the Buffalo Bills in Week 11 on Sunday at 4:25 p.m. ET on CBS when she does not have a concert. That would make it easy for Swift to travel the just over two-hour distance between the Rogers Centre and Highmark Stadium, the Bills’ home stadium, to see her fiancé and Chiefs All-Pro tight end Travis Kelce play in person. She did go to Kansas City’s AFC divisional round playoff game at Buffalo last season.

North refuted that the NFL planned the Chiefs-Bills game in Buffalo for Week 11 to accommodate Swift’s tour. “Did the NFL intentionally schedule Chiefs games near her tour dates so she could attend? “I promise you we didn’t,” North stated.