Sure, the Chiefs’ Hallmark movie is a rom-com. It’s also a love letter to sports fans

In 2024, seeing a holiday romantic comedy based around (and made in partnership with) the Kansas City Chiefs naturally calls to mind one of the most fussed-over celebrity couples in recent memory: the Chiefs’ Travis Kelce and the world’s Taylor Swift.

But Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, which premieres on Hallmark on Saturday night, is a romance only in part. It’s about a woman named Alana (Hunter King) who gets her entire family of Chiefs fanatics in the running for Fan of the Year. The team’s Director of Fan Engagement (Tyler Hynes) is assigned to be the family’s liaison with the team, and he and Alana begin making starry eyes at each other … and so forth.

While the romance itself is pretty down-the-middle, what’s charming about the movie is its affection for Alana’s whole family and how much the Chiefs mean to them. Having a partnership with a real NFL team can make the film feel like, well, a lot. (There’s only so much Chiefs merch and signage you can look at before it gets oppressive). But combined with other Kansas City touches (a cameo from the mayor, for instance), you do get a fuller sense that this fandom really exists, even if these particular people are fictional.

Part of the movie’s backstory is that Alana’s family began with the Chiefs: her mother’s family and her father’s family had season tickets next to each other, the families became friends, her mom and dad started dating, and now it’s all one big group — still with season tickets, though it’s now in a new stadium.

There really are families like this, and it’s why a lot of people like sports. You know this if you were paying attention earlier this year when the Oakland A’s played their last game in Oakland, before being ripped out of their community and sent to the purgatory of a minor-league stadium on the way to what’s supposed to be a permanent home in Las Vegas. Oakland fans are experiencing a genuine sense of loss, and while it is about baseball, it’s not only about baseball. If you know any Oakland fans who were sad about this change, there’s a decent chance their devastation has something to do with somebody they love, or loved, who also loved the A’s. Families watch games together, friends watch games together, people talk about players and changes, and it does grow to mean something to them. (Just yesterday, a friend asked me how bummed I’ll be if my team, the Phillies, trade Alec Bohm.)

Holiday Touchdown explores the overlap of family and fandom. Above, Christine Ebersole, from left, Ed Begley Jr., Diedrich Bader, Megyn Price, Hunter King and Tyler Hynes.

Matt Hoover/Hallmark Media

hide caption

toggle caption

Matt Hoover/Hallmark Media

In the movie, Alana’s family has a superstition about a knit hat that someone has to wear every year on Christmas in order to make the Chiefs win. On the one hand, it’s very silly. On the other hand, it’s absolutely something that a family of fans might do. I have been known to genuinely pause and wonder whether I should or should not wear a team shirt on a given day, based on some sense that it might be good or bad luck. Superstitions are part of the deal. Goofy? Sure. Genuine? You bet.

So while I cannot defend the integrity of Derrick getting romantically involved with one of the fans up for Fan of the Year (that’s not what they mean by Fan Engagement, Derrick!), the idea of centering a holiday movie around a family’s love of the home team is a pretty good one.

This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.

Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.