In the major US sports leagues, a three-peat is when a team becomes national champions three years running.

It has been done five times in both basketball’s NBA and ice hockey’s NHL, and four times in Major League Baseball.

The Green Bay Packers have achieved two three-peats in the NFL, sealing the latter by winning the first two Super Bowls in 1967 and 1968, but no team has ever won three straight Super Bowls.

Before the Kansas City dynasty, there had been eight back-to-back champions in the Super Bowl era, with five of them reaching the play-offs the following season.

Three lost in the Conference Championships – effectively the Super Bowl semi-finals – with the Dallas Cowboys the most recent to go that far (1995), so the Chiefs have already gone closer than anyone else to a Super Bowl three-peat.

This is their fifth Super Bowl in six years, with quarterback Patrick Mahomes and coach Andy Reid going for a fourth win.