The NFL isn’t budging on their selection for the Super Bowl halftime performer… obviously.
On February 8, Bad Bunny will headline Super Bowl LX’s halftime show. The global superstar and Puerto Rican rapper, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has been in a news a lot since the NFL tapped him for the job. There were a lot of rumors as to who would grace the Super Bowl Halftime stage, with many assuming that Taylor Swift would be chosen since she’s been so intertwined with the NFL in the past couple of years.
Some even thought that this would be the year that country music would return to the big game’s biggest stage, but that didn’t happen either. Instead, the NFL went with Bad Bunny.
To be clear, it’s not like that decision came out of nowhere, and isn’t backed up by the numbers. Bad Bunny is undoubtedly a musical powerhouse when it comes to global reach and popularity. He boasts 77.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and he made history when he became the first ever artist to capture the No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with an all-Spanish language project. And if the NFL wants to try and expand its empire into Latin America… it’s a no-brainer.
Though the statistics and streaming numbers are there to back up the decision, plenty of NFL fans have voiced their disdain with the league’s choice to have the artist – who has famously and strongly opposed President Donald Trump and his policies – take center stage when the entire world is watching “The Big Game.” The move certainly seems like a politically-motivated middle finger to the President and his immigration policy.
There’s even a number of petitions out there to have Bad Bunny replaced, and even one (that now has over 60,000 signatures) attempting to get country music legend George Strait to step in for the Puerto Rican artist as the Super Bowl halftime entertainment. Will anything ever come from these petitions? Probably not. But their presence does show that there’s a yearning for country music to take the Super Bowl’s biggest stage once more. Plus, country music seems to have more global reach than it ever has, evidenced by artists like Luke Combs, Zach Bryan and Morgan Wallen selling out football stadiums all around the world… particularly in Europe, where the NFL has been hosting a ton of games in the past few years.
If country music were ever to get another shot at the Super Bowl Halftime Show… now seems like a pretty good time.
Nevertheless, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was asked by reporters today if he or the NFL was reconsidering their selection of Bad Bunny, and how they came to the decision to choose him as the halftime entertainment. Goodell spoke very firmly about the league’s selection, and emphasized that they will not be budging on Bad Bunny even amidst the blowback:
“He’s one of the leading and most popular entertainers in the world. That’s what we try to (choose). It’s an important stage to us. It’s an important element to the entertainment value. It’s carefully thought through. I’m not sure we’ve ever selected an artist where we didn’t have some blowback or criticism.”
To be fair, the blowback is usually because they’re just lame and/or washed up…
He continued:
“It’s pretty hard to do when you have literally hundreds of millions of people that are watching. We’re confident it’s going to be a great show. He understands the platform that he’s on, and I think it’s going to be exciting and a united moment.”
Roger Goodell might be right in saying that you can’t ever pick an artist that makes everyone happy… but this is the first time in my memory that an NFL commissioner has had to somewhat defend the selection of the Super Bowl halftime performer.
It’s certainly an interesting situation for the National Football League… but I think Roger knows that everyone is still going to tune into the “Big Game” on February 8 regardless of who the halftime show consists of. And if you think people are mad now, just wait until Bad Bunny inevitably makes some kind of political statement that infuriates both the President, and many of his top supporters… that’s when the real fireworks happen.
