When the New England Patriots won a stunning three Super Bowls between 2015 and 2019, broadcast camera operators could always count on one shot: Gisele Bündchen running gracefully onto the field to embrace her husband after the big game. Bündchen, then married to star quarterback Tom Brady, was the consummate NFL wife: smiling, supportive and telegenic—a bona fide supermodel who at once softened and bolstered Brady’s image.
When the New England Patriots won a stunning three Super Bowls between 2015 and 2019, broadcast camera operators could always count on one shot: Gisele Bündchen running gracefully onto the field to embrace her husband after the big game. Bündchen, then married to star quarterback Tom Brady, was the consummate NFL wife: smiling, supportive and telegenic—a bona fide supermodel who at once softened and bolstered Brady’s image.
It didn’t matter that Bündchen wasn’t personally a football fan. “I thought it was the most boring thing I’ve ever seen in my life," she told ESPN in a 2021 interview about her early experiences watching the sport. She could still help sell it: She joined Brady as a spokesmodel for Under Armour in 2014, co-chaired the Met Gala with him in 2017 and regularly defended him from any criticism on the sidelines, whether it was a rare Super Bowl loss (“My husband cannot f—ing throw and catch the ball at the same time") or the investigation into whether he had deliberately ordered the deflation of footballs in a championship game. With Bündchen’s support, Brady became the NFL’s leading man.
It didn’t matter that Bündchen wasn’t personally a football fan. “I thought it was the most boring thing I’ve ever seen in my life," she told ESPN in a 2021 interview about her early experiences watching the sport. She could still help sell it: She joined Brady as a spokesmodel for Under Armour in 2014, co-chaired the Met Gala with him in 2017 and regularly defended him from any criticism on the sidelines, whether it was a rare Super Bowl loss (“My husband cannot f—ing throw and catch the ball at the same time") or the investigation into whether he had deliberately ordered the deflation of footballs in a championship game. With Bündchen’s support, Brady became the NFL’s leading man.
In the wake of their 2022 divorce, a new bloc of modern-day Bündchens has filled the VIP suites of stadiums. Call them the NFL’s WAGs, or “wives and girlfriends," a term popularized by the British press in the mid-2000s to describe soccer players’ romantic partners.
Today’s NFL WAG has taken those cinematic field runs and turned them into a business. The new paramours of star quarterbacks and linemen have leveraged their position on the sidelines to create full-fledged lifestyle brands. Take designer Kristin Juszczyk (married to San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk), who turns basic fan jerseys into trendy puffer jackets and sexy corsets and who last season signed a licensing deal with the league itself. Many have careers that eclipse those of their partners. This season’s WAGs include Olympic gymnast Simone Biles (married to Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens), TikTok wunderkind Alix Earle (dating Miami Dolphins wide receiver Braxton Berrios) and—perhaps you’ve heard—global superstar Taylor Swift (dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce).
Swift spent the last NFL season cheering Kelce all the way to the Super Bowl and uncovering a vast female audience for the sport in the process. In the past, the league attempted to engage women with cringey gimmicks like girly jerseys, says Madeline Hill, writer of the sports gossip newsletter Impersonal Foul. Then Swift started showing up at Chiefs games, and the league got smart about how to reach those fans.
“The NFL was tweeting song lyrics and photos of Swift from their main account, which is pretty much unheard-of," Hill says. “They do not typically talk about the girlfriends of their players on the main account where they’re talking about the scores of the game."
The NFL’s favorability ratings among Gen Z and millennial women have been rising steadily since 2017 but jumped 11 percent between July and December 2023 to reach 64 percent, according to a survey by Morning Consult. Then came Super Bowl LVIII: 98 million women tuned in to watch the Chiefs play the 49ers this February, the highest figure ever recorded, according to data Nielsen pulled for the NFL. Call it the Swift effect if you like—the result is that more women are paying attention to the NFL, which means WAGs have even more opportunities to expand their brands. As Biles put it on Instagram, these days, “football is for the girls."
“We’ve been steadily and consistently growing our female fan base for many years," says the NFL’s chief marketing officer, Tim Ellis. “While Taylor Swift is undoubtedly a powerhouse who holds great influence over a specific demographic, it’s her authentic and relatable connection to the game that has helped supercharge our engagement with young women 12 to 24 years old."
He says Swift was not an official recruit, but “we do actively work to cultivate relationships with female brand ambassadors and influencers who also have an existing connection to and love of our game. It’s these relationships that enable us to authentically deepen connections that women have with the sport."
Paul Desisto, a talent agent who represents influencers Hannah Ann Sluss (married to Detroit Lions running back Jake Funk) and Sydney Warner (married to 49ers linebacker Fred Warner), says the past year has been huge for his WAG clients. “From 2022 to 2023, there’s almost been a 100 percent explosion" in clients’ football-related brand deals, he says. “It’s doubled. I’ve been in this business a long time, and it’s very rare to see that type of growth."
Brands are now quite eager to have WAGs promote their products on the sidelines. Sluss, a former Bachelor contestant with 1.2 million followers on Instagram, films social-media ads for Verizon (a corporate partner of the NFL) while watching Funk in the stadium and for Barefoot Wine (whose parent, Gallo, is the league’s official wine sponsor) and Heluva Good! dips while cheering him on at home.
Nick Kelly, vice president of partnerships at Verizon, says Sluss represents a useful cross-section of audiences: reality TV fans, home chefs, fashion lovers and other groups that tilt female. “Women make up almost half of the NFL’s fan base, so finding authentic ways to leverage our NFL partnership to engage that audience is crucial," he says.
As for Barefoot, it’s not the first time the brand has teamed up with a WAG: Amy Lund, vice president of integrated marketing at Gallo, says that previous partners have included Camille Kostek (former Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski’s longtime girlfriend) andKatherine Webb-McCarron (married to quarterback A.J. McCarron, a high-level minor-league player).
Earle, meanwhile, has filmed some of her most popular TikToks on the sidelines of Dolphins games, including one set to audio from last summer’s Barbie—she’s Barbie, and Berrios is Ken, of course. Game days are now workdays for both player and WAG.
Erin Andrews, Fox Sports’ veteran NFL reporter, knows firsthand the power of WAG promotion. She launched Wear, her own fan-gear brand for women, in 2019. “I would go do sit-down interviews with Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes—everybody I sat down with, I made a gift bag for any of the females in their lives, their mothers, their girlfriends, their wives, and that’s really how we started getting the word out," she says.
Last season, Swift wore three different pieces from Andrews’s line, including a bright-red bomber that she tossed casually over her shoulder on the way into the Super Bowl. Each appearance led to a jump in sales, Andrews says.
This summer, Netflix premiered Receiver, a docuseries about players and their families that follows the success of last year’s Quarterback.As the NFL has branched out into this kind of reality TV entertainment, WAGs have become even more important in building the brands of their partners. Player-WAG weddings, especially, have become a way for couples to establish themselves as true celebrities. In June, Sluss and Funk married in a 12th-century castle in Tuscany; the following month they celebrated their reception with friends in Miami. Both events were covered by People.
There were also, naturally, branded elements of the experience. “There’s usually a vendor every step of the way that you can partner with," Desisto says, including jewelers, invitation printers, wedding gown designers and all manner of beauty services leading up to the big day. “For Hannah’s wedding, she did so many wedding partnerships," he says, including ads for Hydrafacial and for Nutrafol, a hair-growth supplement.
Perhaps the most talked-about WAG wedding this summer belonged to reality star and former Miss Universe Olivia Culpo, who married San Francisco running back Christian McCaffrey. Neither is a huge celebrity on their own, but together, they achieved the ultimate marker of power-couple status: a wedding feature in Vogue. But when Culpo told the magazine she didn’t want her modest Dolce & Gabbana ceremony gown to “exude sex in any way, shape or form," it prompted TikTok critics to accuse her of pushing a conservative agenda. Culpo and McCaffrey responded directly in the comments, calling one creator “evil" and creating a week of tabloid-news headlines.
To change the narrative this season, the pair could decide to start a family—another huge branding opportunity. “When our clients announce a pregnancy and have kids, their income typically doubles," Desisto says, thanks to the myriad pregnancy and newborn products available for promotion.
Pregnancies also make for excellent sideline social-media content: Last August, in the preseason, singer Ciara (married to Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Russell Wilson) announced her fourth pregnancy and showed up to games in custom, bump-friendly team apparel. Brittany Mahomes (married to Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes) could do the same this year: She recently announced her third pregnancy with a family photo shoot.
But WAG life is not just weddings and babies. Mahomes has become an influencer in her own right: She has two million followers on Instagram, partnerships with Alani Nu energy drinks and Owyn protein shakes, and burgeoning celebrity friendships with Swift and her squad, and this year appeared in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. That last accomplishment sparked some backlash online—Why her? To which fellow WAG Kelly Stafford (married to Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford) responded, Why not?
“For those of you who are wondering if it’s appropriate to use the platform you were handed, I would say it absolutely is," Stafford wrote on Instagram after Mahomes’s photo shoot went viral. “Don’t be ashamed of how you received it, be grateful and use it."
The perception of WAGs has changed over time, but “there’s a bit of a way to go," Hill says. “It does make people a little bit uncomfortable to view WAGs outside of this traditional role of being a supportive partner instead of being businesspeople and individuals who have their own autonomy outside of the relationship."
Allison Kuch, a WAG who has reached over three million followers on TikTok by posting about her experiences being pregnant during the past NFL season, just signed with UTA for representation even though her husband (defensive end Isaac Rochell) got cut from the Las Vegas Raiders last season. (Rochell also signed with the talent agency.) Kuch recently told her followers that regardless of what happens with her husband’s career, she plans to keep talking about football on TikTok and on her podcast, Sunday Sports Club.
The average NFL career lasts 3.3 years. WAGs, on the other hand, can work forever.
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