Kayla Nicole poked fun at her past relationship with Travis Kelce — and his new romance with Taylor Swift — in an eyebrow-raising Super Bowl campaign that also features Offset.
The premise of the tongue-in-cheek ad for fantasy league site Sleeper, which premiered Sunday, was to show off the services of a faux “Ex Communicator” business run by Tiffany Haddish and NBA star Ben Simmons. In doing so, they feature talking-head interviews with three of their “clients,” each of whom apparently sought the duo’s help in untangling their famous exes from their public images.
“Don’t get me started on these two — they’ve got no idea what they’re doing,” Nicole says during her scene, with text at the bottom of the screen identifying her as the “ex of a certain NFL player.” “Simmons & Haddish promised me that they could put an end to this whole ‘ex-girlfriend’ fiasco quickly.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Simmons interjects, and after an exasperated Nicole throws out two other synonyms — “rapidly” and “pronto” — the NBA star directly makes a joke about the Kansas City Chiefs tight end’s ultra famous fiancée. “I said swiftly, why is that so hard to remember?”
After that, Haddish jumps in to set up a dig at Kelce. “That’s on me, I came at him wrong. I thought he was Black, my bad,” she says, to which Simmons replies, “To your credit, Tiff, we as a [Black] community need to be better gatekeepers of the taper fade,” referencing the football player’s love of the fade hairstyle.
Nicole and Kelce dated on and off between 2017 and 2022. The Sleeper ad isn’t the first time she’s playfully addressed her breakup from the New Heights podcaster since he started dating Swift in 2023; this past Halloween, the sports commentator dressed up as Toni Braxton and posted a video of herself singing along to “He Wasn’t Man Enough.”
Many fans at the time assumed Nicole’s costume was in reference to Kelce getting engaged to Swift the previous August, going off lyrics in the song like, “Do you know I dumped your husband, girlfriend?/ I’m not thinking ’bout him/ But you married him.”
But Nicole isn’t the only one trying to get people to see her as more than someone’s ex: Offset — whose messy split from estranged wife Cardi B has been playing out publicly since July 2024 — also appeared in the Sleeper ad, sarcastically quipping, “I don’t even know what I’m doing here, I’m great at relationships.”
Watch the Sleeper ad featuring Kayla Nicole and ‘Set below.
