US President Donald Trump Set To Script History By Attending NFL Super Bowl

The Kansas City Chiefs aim for a historic hat-trick of Super Bowl titles on Sunday when they take on the Philadelphia Eagles in front of a star-studded crowd in New Orleans headed by US President Donald Trump. A strident critic of the National Football League over the years, Trump will become the first sitting president ever to attend the Super Bowl when he takes his seat among a sell-out crowd of around 74,000 fans at the Caesars Superdome for the  biggest annual event in the American sporting calendar.

Pop superstar Taylor Swift will also be in the VIP seats to watch as her boyfriend Travis Kelce and his Chiefs team-mates bid to become the first team in history to lift three consecutive Vince Lombardi Trophies.

Trump's presence at the NFL showpiece will heighten security around an event which was already protected by a heavy police presence following the New Year's Day attack which left 14 people dead and many more injured in the Big Easy's famous Bourbon Street district.

"I'm confident the safest place this weekend will be under the security umbrella we have in place around (the Superdome)," Cathy Lanier, the NFL's chief security officer, said this week. "We have reviewed, and re-reviewed, all the events of January 1."

Trump's groundbreaking attendance at the game comes against a backdrop of a strained relationship with the NFL stretching back several decades, when he sought to join the league as an owner in the early 1980s only to be rebuffed.

Trump also triggered uproar during his first term as president when in 2017 he criticized NFL players who knelt during the playing of the US national anthem to draw attention to issues of racial injustice.

Players in Sunday's game have so far walked a diplomatic line when asked