KANSAS CITY, Mo. — At 5:30 p.m. Sunday, just as the Kansas City Chiefs trot onto GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium to play the Buffalo Bills, 39-year-old Eyvin Nygaard Sommerseth will be 4,500 miles away, sitting on his couch in Halden, Norway, dressed in his Chiefs gear — Patrick Mahomes or Chris Jones jersey — waiting at 12:30 a.m. local time for the AFC championship game to begin.

He will be up until 3 a.m., 4 a.m., however long the game goes.

Keith Graham will be doing the same in his home in Bristol, England, as will Lewis Forbes in Aberdeen, Scotland.

“I am a Chiefs fan first and a football fan second,” Forbes, 33, wrote from Scotland. “I am definitely going to watch the Bills game on Sunday. I have even taken Monday off of work.”

Because that’s what fans who are part of the expanding world-wide reach of Chiefs Kingdom do.

“I wore a Chiefs hat to work last year,” said Sommerseth, a former seventh-grade teacher who’s been a Chiefs fan since he was a teenage exchange student in the United States. “One of the girls suddenly wanted me to talk to me about Travis Kelce.

“I was a bit surprised that she knew the name, but quickly realized it was because of Taylor Swift. In fact, after he started dating Taylor Swift, I’d say he’s become a fairly known name in this country.”

Said Graham, via email from Bristol, “There are a LOT of Chiefs fans over here. I tried to get Chiefs tickets for Germany last time they were over, but entered the queue at around 420,000th in a queue of 1.3 million people trying to buy like 40k tickets. So it’s PRETTY popular there too!”

Indeed, they are. Ten NFL teams currently have rights, granted through the National Football League’s Global Markets Program, to build brands in Germany. Of those, the Chiefs are the most popular.

Last week, when quarterback Patrick Mahomes — tackled at the ankles and about to hit the turf — threw a touchdown pass to Kelce, the Chief’s German Instagram page, chiefsdeutschland, responded with a photo and all-capital letters caption:

DIESER TD HAT UNS SPRACHLOS GEMACHT.

You said it. Translation: This TD left us speechless.

Known around the globe

Equally remarkable is how the Chiefs, even though they are not technically “America’s team” — a moniker earned by the Dallas Cowboys for their successes in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s — are closing in on the organization’s stated goal of becoming, as lofty as it sounds, “the world’s team.”

Should the Chiefs beat the Bills on Sunday, and go on to make U.S. sports history with a three-peat in the Super Bowl, momentum toward that goal will undoubtedly be supercharged.

But whatever the outcome of Sunday’s game against Buffalo, Mark Donovan, the Chiefs’ president, told The Star that the goal of turning the Chiefs into the world’s team is one that has existed since 2021.

It was launched not long after the team played in its second straight Super Bowl (lost that one to Tampa Bay). And it’s a goal that isn’t changing.

“No matter what happens,” Donovan said, ”I think we’re going to continue to grow. ... I think we’ve become one of the brands that represents the National Football League across the entire world.”

Appearing in four Super Bowls in five years, and winning three, doesn’t hurt. By Sunday’s end, the Chiefs will have played in seven American Football League Championship games in as many years.

The romance between Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, arguably the biggest pop star on the planet, has gathered new fans across the globe.

Lewis, from Scotland, calls it “the undeniable Taylor Swift effect.”

“There are Chiefs sweatshirts and T-shirts being sold in clothing stores that never sold any sports merchandise before,” he said, “but also don’t sell items for any other teams. I can only assume that this was prompted by Taylor coming to the UK on her Era’s tour.”

How to tell if you’re all-world

Still, determining if any single NFL team is becoming “the world’s team” isn’t easy. It depends on how one measures. Donovan acknowledges that, in the pre-Mahomes era, a number of winning teams got a large head start in building fan bases and brand loyalty.

“If you look at this historically,” Donovan notes, “there were dominant teams in decades. The Steelers, for a long time, were the dominant team. The Raiders, for a long time, were one of the dominant teams. The Packers, the Patriots, the Cowboys: They’re all strong players across domestic markets and internationally.”

And still are. Go by Facebook followers and the Dallas Cowboys are still No. 1, with more than 8 million. The Chiefs, with around 3 million, rank 13th of 32 teams. But go by Instagram, and the Chiefs suddenly jump to third, although still behind the Cowboys and Patriots.

Change platforms once more, though, and the Chiefs rise to the top. In December, they announced they’d become the first NFL franchise to not only gain 1 million subscribers on YouTube, but also to top 5 million followers on TikTok.

Country-by-country, teams have their own strengths. In Miami, where 70% of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, the Dolphins, as part of the NFL Global Markets Program, are focusing on building their base in six countries. Besides the United Kingdom, all have roots in or ties to Spanish culture: Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina.

The Los Angeles Rams also have marketing rights in six countries, tied with Miami so far with the most in the program. Except for Mexico, they appear pointed toward attracting fans across the Pacific — in China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia.

Of the 25 teams in the program, the Chiefs, Detroit Lions, New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburgh Steelers are in four countries each. For the Chiefs, those are Mexico, Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

“I think the point of difference for us right now ... is that there are very few (teams) that are as strong as we are across all markets,” Donovan said. “If you go to Mexico, you’re going to see very strong measurements for Raiders, Steelers, Cowboys. ...

“If you go to London and the UK, Jacksonville has made a very strong effort over the years. We have a very strong following in the UK.

“You look at Germany, one of the markets that we really focused on, we’re No. 1 across just about every single measure in Germany.”

They also are the No. 1 most popular NFL franchise in France and Spain, according to the Chiefs. They’re No. 2 in Canada, Australia and Brazil and, currently, fourth in Mexico and fifth in the United Kingdom.

Other countries, Donovan said, may soon be in their marketing sights.

“We think that being more pan-European would be a good strategy for us,” he said. “We played in London (against the Lions in 2015), and had a great response there. Can we bridge the gap between the UK and Germany? Do we do that through Spain? There are a lot of opportunities there to grow across Europe.”

Inside the numbers ...

Because, as in all sports, numbers count, here are others that speak to the Chiefs’ growing global reach:

— According to the Walt Disney Company , which owns the sports network ESPN, last week’s playoff game between the Chiefs and Houston Texans, was the most-watched NFL game on ESPN — with 33.8 million viewers — dating back to 1987.

— The NFL estimates that Super Bowl LVIII last year, in which the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 25-23 in overtime, was watched by an average 123.4 million viewers across all platforms, making it one of the most watched single telecasts in history.

— In November the NFL Players Association released its list of 50 top players in product and merchandise sales, meaning from jerseys to bobble-heads to decals. No 1: Patrick Mahomes. Travis Kelce was 10th (an interesting note here: Kelce’s jersey was the No. 1 seller in the UK).

— Most watched NFL players on Instagram: Odell Beckham Jr., but Kelce and Mahomes are tied for second.

— Most searched team outside the U.S.: Dallas Cowboys, closely followed by the Chiefs and then the Bills.

— Most searched NFL player on google: Travis Kelce (Thank you Taylor Swift).

And regarding Travis Kelce ...

The analytics company podtrac notes that the New Heights podcast that Kelce and his brother, Jason Kelce, a former center for the Philadelphia Eagles, have hosted since 2022 has been the No. 1 sports podcast on both Apple and Spotify for the last 12 months. And on Youtube.

While most of its downloads — some 7 million per month — come from the U.S., it also routinely ranks high in Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Finland and Ireland, expanding the Chiefs’ brand.

So does Donovan think the Chiefs can already lay claim to the title of the world’s team?

“I think we’re making unprecedented progress toward that,” he said. “I think if you look at the rankings and the measurements, it’s a really strong statement of just how popular we are across the world — more so than just about any other NFL club.”

About?

“We’re not there yet,” he said. “We have work to do.”

First things first: Buffalo.

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