Hallmark and Chiefs team up for ‘Holiday Touchdown,’ a sports rom-com: NPR

The attraction between superfan Alana (Hunter King) and the Chiefs Director of Fan Engagement (Tyler Hynes) is just one of the love stories in Holiday Touchdown.

Joshua Haines/Hallmark Media

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Joshua Haines/Hallmark Media

Watching a 2024 holiday romantic comedy based on (and co-produced by) the Kansas City Chiefs naturally brings to mind one of the most confused celebrity couples in recent memory: the Chiefs’ Travis Kelce and the world’s Taylor Swift.

But Holiday Touchdown: A Chief’s Love Storypremiering on Hallmark Saturday night, is only part romance. 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 tasked with being the family’s liaison to the team, and he and Alana begin seeing starry eyes…and so on.

While the romance itself is pretty down-to-earth, what’s charming about the film is its devotion to Alana’s entire family and how much the Chiefs mean to them. Having a partnership with a real NFL team can make the movie 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 example), you get a fuller sense that this fandom really exists, even if these particular people are fictional.

Part of the film’s backstory is that Alana’s family started with the Chiefs: her mom’s family and her dad’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 a season ticket, although it is now at a new stadium.

There really are families like this and that’s why many people like sports. You know if you were paying attention earlier this year, when the Oakland A’s played their last game in Oakland before being ripped from their community and sent to the purgatory of a minor-league stadium en route to what is supposed to be be a permanent home in Las Vegas. Oakland fans are experiencing one real sense of lossand even though it’s about baseball, it’s not just about baseball. If you know any Oakland fans who were upset about this change, there’s a good chance their devastation has something to do with someone 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 grows to mean something to them. (Just yesterday a friend asked me how mad I would be if my team, the Phillies, traded 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

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Matt Hoover/Hallmark Media

In the film, Alana’s family has a superstition about a knit hat that someone must wear every year for Christmas to make the Chiefs win. On the one hand, it’s very silly. On the other hand, it’s definitely something that a family of fans can do. I’ve been known to really pause and wonder if I should or shouldn’t be wearing a team jersey on any given day, based on a sense that it could be luck or bad luck. Superstition is part of the deal. Goofy? Sure. Genuine? You bet.

So while I can’t defend the integrity of Derrick getting romantically involved with one of the fans 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 for the home team is pretty good.

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 on what makes us happy.

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