Monday, June 29, 2026

Surprise! Ratings Mystery as “Saturday Night Live” Numbers Jump with NFL Star Travis Kelce, Singer Kelsea Ballerini

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Well, no one knows anything.

“SNL” ratings jumped this past Saturday with host Travis Kelce and musical guest Kelsea Ballerini.

The NFL star commanded a 4.5 million total viewer number, up by 400,000 viewers from the week before when “Last of Us” star Pedro Pascal hosted.

Why? Who knows? Maybe a fresh face, unexpected, did the trick. Maybe the Super Bowl win helped.

Anyway, it’s good news for the show and for Ballerini. Her appearance pushed her EP, called “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat” — to number 3 on iTunes. It’s not called “Rolling Out the Welcome Mat.” That would mean she’s welcoming people. Rolling Up means turning people away, which obviously “SNL” did not.

Any lessons here? Country music is very popular. So are football players. These two were like homecoming king and queen. Interesting.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=K2u7P5M9dbU

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009, where he covered Michael Jackson, and previously wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine in the mid-1990s, where he covered the O.J. Simpson trial. He also edited Fame magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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