Billionaire singer Taylor Swift has cleared up a speculation that she was asked to perform at the 2026 Super Bowl.
Swift, who has just released a new album, The Life of a Showgirl, was rumored to have been tapped by the NFL before rapper Bad Bunny was announced as next year’s halftime performer.
Swift, hitting the talk show circuit to promote the music, appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. In an extended segment that did not go to air, Fallon asked Swift about the Super Bowl.
Swift’s fiancé, Travis Kelce, plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, and she has been on the receiving end of President Donald Trump’s social media rages.
Fallon asked if she declined performing at the Super Bowl because the NFL wouldn’t let her own the footage of her performance. The superstar purchased the rights to all her music and music videos earlier this year, meaning she owns her entire creative back catalogue.
“No,” Swift said, before mentioning rapper and business mogul Jay-Z, whose company Roc Nation has selected the performers and produced the Super Bowl halftime shows since 2019.
“Jay-Z has always been very good to me,” Swift said. “Our [business] teams are really close. They sometimes will call and say, ‘How does she feel about… you know…”
Swift gestured as though she was being discreetly asked about performing at the Super Bowl.
“And that’s not, like, an official offer or like a conference-room conversation, our teams are really close, ‘How does she feel about it in general?’”
The “Blank Space” singer then raised the issue of dating an NFL player. Kelce has been a member of three Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs teams, winning rings in 2020, 2023, and 2024.
“I am in love with a guy who does that sport on that actual field,” she told Fallon.
“Like, [professional football] is violent chess. That is gladiators without swords. That is dangerous. Throughout the whole season, I am locked in on what that man is doing on the field. Can you imagine if he’s out there every single week, putting his life on the line, doing this very dangerous, very high-pressure, high-intensity sport, and I’m like, ‘I wonder what my choreo should be? I think we should do two verses of “Shake It Up,” into “Blank Space,” into “Cruel Summer,” would be great!’”
Swift added, “This has nothing to do with Travis—he would love for me to do it. But I’m just too locked in.”
The selection of Bad Bunny, who has been outspoken about his hatred of ICE, has infuriated MAGA.
Trump, 79, who posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” last year and said in May that she was “no longer hot revealed on Monday he had never heard of Bad Bunny, but did not want him performing at the Super Bowl.
Speaking on NewsMax’s Greg Kelly Reports, Trump said of Bad Bunny, “I never heard of him, I don’t know who he is, I don’t know why they’re doing it, it’s like, crazy,” Trump said. “Then they blame it on some promoter that they hired to pick up entertainment. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl sold 2.7 million copies in its first day of release last Friday, which includes physical and digital formats.
That breaks her own record, with 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department selling 2.61 million copies in one week.
The post Taylor Swift’s Super Bowl Answer That Wasn’t Aired on Fallon appeared first on The Daily Beast.
