Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance was ‘carefully thought through,’ NFL says
The NFL is standing behind its decision to have Bad Bunny on the Super Bowl stage in 2026 amid criticism from President Donald Trump and a slew of other conservative politicians.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Wednesday said choosing the Grammy-winning Puerto Rican artist as the halftime show headliner was “carefully thought through,” according to the Associated Press.
“I’m not sure we’ve ever selected an artist where we didn’t have some blowback or criticism,” Goodell said during a news conference. “It’s pretty hard to do when you have literally hundreds of millions of people that are watching.”
The 31-year-old, born Benito Antonion Martínez Ocasio, is also poised to become the first headlining act to perform solely in Spanish.
“He’s one of the leading and most popular entertainers in the world. That’s what we try to achieve. It’s an important stage for us. It’s an important element to the entertainment value,” Goodell said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
After the news was announced in September, politicians and social media users politicized Bad Bunny’s upcoming performance. Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson – who said “God Bless the U.S.A.” singer-songwriter Lee Greenwood would be the “clear and obvious preference” – and Trump criticized Roc Nation and the NFL’s choice to name Bad Bunny as the headliner.
In an interview on the conservative news network Newsmax, Trump claimed he had “never heard of” Bad Bunny, one of the most-streamed artists globally in recent years.
“I don’t know who he is. I don’t know why they’re doing it, it’s like crazy,” he said. “Then they blame it on some promoter that they hired to pick up entertainment. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Bad Bunny has also been vocal in his opposition to Trump and his policies in the past. During Trump’s first presidency, two back-to-back hurricanes, including Hurricane Maria, ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, killing around 3,000 people and displacing thousands more.
At the time, the reggaeton star criticized the Trump administration’s response and lack of aid to the island following the natural disaster.
A Change.org petition urging to replace Bad Bunny with George Strait as the halftime show headliner has received 70,000 signatures and counting.
The online petition says that while music’s biggest stage has “leaned increasingly towards modern pop and international artists” in recent years, an artist like Strait “embodies the heart and soul of American music.”Roc Nation, the entertainment company owned by Jay-Z, has partnered with the league since 2019 to produce the halftime show.
“We’re confident it’s going to be a good show. (Bad Bunny) understands the platform that he is on, and I think it’s going to be (an) exciting and uniting moment,” Goodell said.