YouTube: New HeightsTravis and Jason Kelce’s ‘New Heights’ episode with Taylor Swift has shattered the concurrent livestream viewership record for YouTube podcasts since the site launched the service in 2023.
On August 13, 2025, the Philadelphia Eagles’ Jason Kelce and Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce finally invited Taylor Swift onto their joint sports podcast, New Heights.
This episode coincided with the reveal of Swift’s forthcoming album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl,’ which is set to release in October 2025.
Swift’s massive fanbase came in droves to watch their favorite pop star dish about her upcoming music and chat with her boyfriend, Travis — and thanks to their viewership, the New Heights podcast has smashed a YouTube record.
Swifties crash New Heights podcast & break YouTube record
On August 15, YouTube published an update on X, revealing that the two-hour long podcast episode peaked at over 1.3 million concurrent livestream viewers.
This is more views than any other podcast has received on the platform ever since they launched a dedicated service exclusively for podcasts back in 2023.
On top of that, the podcast held an eye-popping number of average viewers at 1.18 million, and the episode has racked up over 15M total views in just two days.
New Heights first launched in 2022, and in the three years since then, its channel has garnered over three million subscribers. The pod’s previous viewership record peaked at 141,821 viewers, making Taylor’s episode a huge success for the show.
That’s not all; Taylor’s New Heights appearance even soared past Donald Trump’s presence on the Joe Rogan Experience in terms of concurrent viewers within its first hour. That JRE episode, which wasn’t livestreamed, boasted 800K viewers in its first hour, while Swifties sped past that at 1.3M — although the stream ended up crashing due to the sheer amount of fans tuning in.
StreamsChartsThe New Heights podcast also weighed in at third place in the most-watched livestreams of the week, losing only to football club FC Barcelona and Twitch streamer CazeTV.
The episode also dominated Spotify, taking over the top spot in three separate categories: Top Episodes, Trending Podcasts, and the Sports subgenre.
