The NFL season has only just begun, and yet a great deal of focus is already on how it will end. We have no idea what teams will play in Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara CA, but we do know who will perform at halftime. And that decision has generated a lot of controversy.
The decision to have Bad Bunny put on the Super Bowl halftime show has generated significant backlash, including a petition to replace him with country singer George Strait. The topic of the halftime show has now gone all the way up to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who, in a press conference (via NFL.com), addressed the controversy, saying that backlash is actually nothing new. He explained…
It's carefully thought through. I'm not sure we've ever selected an artist where we didn't have some blowback or criticism. It's pretty hard to do when you have literally hundreds of millions of people that are watching.
While the NFL only has teams in the United States, the game has grown in popularity across the world, leading to regular games played outside the U.S. and a growing global audience. As Goodell says, with an audience that large, it’s going to be impossible to please every single viewer.
Goodell isn’t the biggest name to speak out on Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show. The President of the United States added his voice to the criticism, calling the decision “crazy” while also claiming he had no idea who Bad Bunny was. Goodell pointed out that while the President may not be up on popular music, the rest of the world knows Bad Bunny quite well, which was a big part of why he was chosen. The commissioner continued…
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.
For many, the only negative to Bad Bunny doing the Super Bowl halftime is that it’s not Taylor Swift. Swift is one of the few recording artists with a global popularity on par with Bad Bunny right now, and those fans absolutely want to see her do the show, in large part because of the better-than-average odds that her fiancé, Travis Kelce, will also end up playing in the game.
While Goodell did not address any petitions to get Bad Bunny removed directly, it seems unlikely that there will be any reconsideration of this decision. While the backlash could certainly die down in the coming weeks, we can expect it will build back up in a few months as the Super Bowl itself gets closer.
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