He’s no Taylor Swift and that may be the only penalty against Bad Bunny on being named the halftime show performer for Super Bowl LX in February.
Nearly everyone except Swift herself had spread the rumor that she would perform at the big game in 2026, an extension of her blossoming love affair with the NFL and engagement to a certain Kansas City Chiefs tight end. But those rumors were crushed Sunday when Bad Bunny instead was announced as the headliner for the Feb. 8 halftime gig at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
Shake it off, Swifties. There are plenty of reasons to cheer for Bad Bunny getting recruited for the big game. Here are five of them.
He’ll help draw an international audience. The rapper/singer/actor born Antonio Martínez Ocasio, 31, has 49 million Instagram followers and more than 117 million monthly Spotify listeners — the kind of huge global following that the NFL itself is still trying to drum up (the Vikings did not play in Dublin this past weekend for lack of beer pubs in Minneapolis). His music is almost exclusively in Spanish, spoken by 560 million people around the world. The extent of his international reach literally hit home last week when the final concert of his Puerto Rico residency broke Amazon Music’s livestreaming record.
Hip-hop draws big crowds, too. Your uncle who comes over to watch the game bringing only a 24-pack of Miller Lite might still hold out hope that the Who or Stones will perform again, but the truth is rock is mostly dead in the eyes of TV producers wanting big viewership. Last year’s performance by Kendrick Lamar was officially the most-watched halftime show of all time with 133.5 million viewers; even higher than the average viewership for the game itself. Viewership has been on the uptick overall since Jay-Z’s Roc Nation took over as producer of the Super Bowl halftime concerts in 2019.
He plays well to TV cameras. Bad Bunny has given a lot of memorable performances on the small screen, both as a comedic actor and as a musical guest on “SNL” (remember the cool one atop NYC skyscraper?) and as the show opener at the 2023 Grammy Awards, where even Swift got up and tried to salsa dance. Never mind the young Bunny’s previous Super Bowl appearance with Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in 2020 when he wore what looked like a tinfoil-lined safety suit as if he was building a time machine backstage.
He has a lot of big-name friends. Part of the fun of halftime shows is waiting to see who else might show up. There are a lot of candidates in his case, as he has recorded hit songs with Drake, Cardi B, Dua Lipa, J Balvin, Lopez, Marc Anthony and current breakout stars Karol G and the Marías. And who knows? Maybe he’ll debut a new collaborative single with another big name between now and then.
He’s safe, save for one area. Unlike last year’s halftime entertainer, Lamar, or Latin America’s best rap star of the day, Mexico’s Peso Pluma, there isn’t a lot about Bunny’s music that’s lyrically edgy or politically controversial. He has a lot of tunes that either celebrate romantic love or his love for his native Puerto Rico. However, he has spoken out in interviews over the Trump administration’s ICE campaign against immigrants, saying he will not tour America until those arrests are scaled back. Will he address those concerns in this year’s halftime show? That could be one Caesars Sportsbook bet around the game with fairly even odds.
