The Kansas City Chiefs tight end joined the “Lover” singer in Sydney on Thursday ahead of her blockbuster Eras tour outing there. Kelce touched down in Australia after he played a round of golf in Las Vegas, hopped a private jet in Los Angeles on Wednesday and made a quick pit stop in Hawaii. That’s a nearly 8,000-mile trip for those keeping track at home.
Yes, that’s even more than the pop superstar’s storied trip to Las Vegas from Tokyo earlier this month to watch Kelce win his third Super Bowl. Swift flew 6,000 miles practically overnight to catch the big game after wrapping her tour stops in Japan on Feb. 10. And it didn’t faze her, because, as she told her properly shocked man on the field, “jet lag is a choice.” (And she caught a lot of heat for that comment too.)
Aerial footage provided to NBC News by Channel Seven Australia showed Kelce emerging from a Bombardier private jet and entering a van in Sydney on Thursday. He was joined by his teammate Ross Travis, who shared a shot of the Australian coastline from inside the aircraft on Instagram.
Among the A-list couple’s first outings? A trip to the Sydney Zoo, which Swift had visited sans boyfriend the day before. According to Australia media, the couple visited the zoo for a private tour and were photographed hand-feeding a kangaroo and snapping selfies in between assorted PDA. (Swift, who has been publicly linked to Kelce since September, hasn’t really showcased their relationship on social media, but notably posted her first TikTok featuring her boyfriend “accidentally going clubbing” with their parents in Las Vegas the day after his team’s victory over the San Francisco 49ers.)
Swift arrived in Melbourne last week following a stopover in Honolulu. Not surprisingly, the newly minted Chiefs super-fan was photographed sporting a KC victory hat when she arrived. She was joined by her Eras tour opener Sabrina Carpenter ahead of her boyfriend’s arrival, had dinner at the swanky Pellegrino 2000 and visited Accor Stadium on Wednesday — the Olympics stadium where she’ll perform four back-to-back shows starting Friday.
All that globe-hopping has not been going unnoticed either, especially after Taylor’s jet-watch made headlines ahead of the Super Bowl. Incidentally, the musician is in the middle of a war of words with a college student precisely tracking her private jet as she travels around the world for business and pleasure.
The “You Need to Calm Down” singer sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jack Sweeney in December alleging that the University of Central Florida student “engaged in stalking and harassing behavior.” His attorney, James Slater, responded last month saying that Sweeney is no “credible threat” to Swift, rebuffed stalking claims and asserted that Swift’s camp cited no law to support their demand. On Monday, Slater told TMZ that he and his partners didn’t see a realistic legal path for Swift to take if she wanted to press the issue.
But the suits can deal with that. Meanwhile, the 34-year-old returned to Australia in said jet last week to perform three shows at Melbourne Cricket Ground, where she notched her biggest audience of the tour yet: 96,000 on Feb. 16.
“This is the biggest show that we have done on this tour or any tour I have ever done,” the “Anti-Hero” singer told the crowd in the sold-out stadium. “That’s the version you get of me tonight, the version that’s completely starstruck by the fact that so many of you wanted to hang out with us on a Friday night in Melbourne.”
The 14-time Grammy Award winner, who has become the subject of many a college course, and her Melbourne outings coincided with a “Swiftposium” in the city, an academic conference where scholars converged to discuss the economic impact and other implications of Swift’s popularity. Swift’s tour — the first to earn more than a billion dollars — and its corresponding “Swiftonomics” have been a boon to the local economies it passes through since launching in March.
After her Sydney shows, Swift wraps the Asian leg of her tour with six concerts in Singapore between March 2 and 9 — her only stop in Southeast Asia. The city-state’s government officials awarded one of their many business grants to the singer earlier this week acknowledging efforts to persuade her to perform there and the potential economic boost her concerts would bring, Reuters reported.
The tourism board and culture ministry did not disclose the amount of the grant but said that the ministry worked with concert promoter AEG Presents to get Swift to perform in Singapore. (Swift is rumored to have been paid $2.77 million per show allegedly on the condition that Singapore would be Eras’ exclusive stop in Southeast Asia, which has stirred up its own controversy.)
It’s unclear whether Kelce, who also traveled to Buenos Aires in November to see the singer perform (and receive what might be the most-watched run for a hug ever), will be in attendance. The football star was not among those at her sold-out Melbourne shows last week as he and his team were reeling from the deadly shooting at the Chiefs’ victory parade. One woman died in the Feb. 14 shooting and nearly two dozen others were injured, among them several children. Two adults were charged with murder on Tuesday in connection to the gun violence.
The NFL star donated $100,000 to two sisters injured in the shooting, and he and his brother — Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce — urged others to donate to help victims recovering from the fatal incident. Swift also donated $100,000 via GoFundMe to the family that lost its mom in the shooting.