It’s not only lucrative to be a Super Bowl advertiser or one of the two team’s star players—people can make a lot of money simply by dating or marrying American football icons.
The wives and girlfriends of San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs players—who faced off during Super Bowl LVIII Sunday night (Feb. 11)—can make a cumulative $700,000 for every sponsored Instagram post they share. The Instagram earnings potential for the most-followed romantic partners of the teams were calculated by LuckyGambler. It’s a site that typically collects data about online gambling but decided to dig into Super Bowl-related metrics because, well, everyone else is doing it (Wells Fargo, Frito Lay’s, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, etc.).
Notably, many of the 49ers’ and Chiefs’ romantic partners are already famous, meaning they’d probably make money on sponsored social media posts without dating a big-time football player. Taylor Swift, the darling of tight-end Travis Kelce (and America), actually makes money for the Chiefs. And of course, she is estimated to make the most of any Chiefs’ significant other for every Instagram post she shares ($637,000).
Then there’s Olivia Culpo, fiancée of the 49ers’ running back Christian McCaffrey. Before meeting McCaffrey, she won the 2012 Miss Universe pageant and dated other star athletes like Ryan Lochte and Tim Tebow. She is estimated to make about $31,000 for every sponsored post. Swift and Culpo have 280.8 and 5.5 million followers, respectively.
But LuckyGambler indicated that dating the athletes helps boost even the most famous stars’ social media profitability. And some not-so-famous wives and girlfriends can still rake it in (though they make much less) from sponsored Instagram posts. Mahogany Jones, wife of 49ers wide receiver Samuel Deebo, for example, can make about $3,000 per post. And less-famous wives and girlfriends are actually making more money on sponsored posts per follower than Swift and Culpo.
While Swift makes two-tenths of one cent on every post per follower, lesser-known girlfriends of players make more than 3 cents for every follower.