• Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime selection was not an experiment in inclusion — it was institutional recognition of cultural dominance that already existed
• President Trump called the performance “an affront to the Greatness of America” while nearly 42 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish at home
• The NFL is not leading a cultural shift — it is catching up to one, and the backlash confirms the shift already happened

SANTA CLARA, CA (TDR) — The conversation around Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show has been framed wrong from the start. Critics say the NFL pandered. Supporters say the NFL championed diversity. Both frames make the same mistake — they assume the NFL is driving something. It isn’t. The league is responding to something that already happened without asking for the NFL’s approval or anyone else’s. Bad Bunny didn’t need the Super Bowl stage to prove his cultural significance. He is the most-streamed artist on the planet. His album just became the first fully Spanish-language project to win the Grammy for Album of the Year. His concert tours sell out stadiums across hemispheres.

The halftime show doesn’t chase culture. It certifies it. And there’s a critical difference between those two things. By the time an institution as commercially cautious as the NFL puts someone at the center of its most-watched broadcast moment, the cultural argument is already settled. The NFL isn’t making a case for Bad Bunny’s relevance. It’s acknowledging a reality that existed before the booking was announced.

The Culture Was Already Here

This is the part the debate keeps missing. Latino cultural influence in the United States didn’t arrive when the NFL noticed it. It was already the dominant force in streaming, in touring revenue, in youth consumption patterns. The NFL’s own numbers confirm it was late to recognize what was happening right in front of it.

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Marissa Solis, the league’s senior vice president of global brand and consumer marketing, acknowledged as much in a 2024 interview when she explained why the NFL launched its “Por La Cultura” campaign.

“It’s mathematically impossible for the league to grow without Latinos. This audience is critical for our growth.”

Read that again. The NFL isn’t saying it wants to attract Latinos. It’s saying it cannot survive without them. The fanbase grew from 31 million to over 40 million in four years — not because the NFL created that audience but because that audience was already there and the league finally started paying attention. The league expanded to 75 Spanish-language broadcasts this season and played games in São Paulo and Madrid. These are not bold moves. They are catch-up moves.

Cultural centers shift quietly. Long before they show up in headlines, they show up in data — streaming numbers, ticket sales, demographic projections. By the time people argue about inclusion or relevance, the real shift has already happened. The halftime booking is what it looks like when an institution finally reads the room it’s been standing in for a decade.

The Backlash Confirms the Shift

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President Donald Trump posted a lengthy response on Truth Social shortly after the performance wrapped Sunday night.

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting.”

The president’s claim that “nobody understands” Spanish deserves a factual check. Roughly 42 million people in the United States speak Spanish at home, according to Census Bureau data. Some estimates put the total number of U.S. Spanish speakers closer to 48.6 million. Globally, nearly 500 million people speak Spanish as their first language.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had telegraphed the administration’s position days earlier, telling reporters the president “would much prefer a Kid Rock performance over Bad Bunny.” Conservative organization Turning Point USA staged a counterprogrammed “All-American Halftime Show” featuring Kid Rock as the headliner.

Here’s what the backlash actually reveals: institutions don’t organize alternatives to things that lack cultural power. Nobody counterprograms irrelevance. The very act of organizing an alternative halftime show — complete with a headliner, a marketing push and political endorsement from the White House — confirms that the thing being countered carries enough weight to threaten the existing cultural order. You don’t build a wall against something that isn’t moving.

Certification Is Power

When an institution of the NFL’s scale puts someone at the center of its most commercially valuable 13 minutes, it isn’t experimenting. It is acknowledging what has already been decided by the market — by listeners, by concertgoers, by the millions of people who made Bad Bunny’s cultural gravity undeniable before Roger Goodell’s team ever discussed the booking.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell defended the selection throughout the week.

“Bad Bunny is, and I think that was demonstrated last night, one of the great artists in the world and that’s one of the reasons we chose him.”

“This platform is used to unite people and to be able to bring people together with their creativity, with their talents and to be able to use this moment to do that.”

The more revealing statement came from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who declared Feb. 8 “Bad Bunny Day” in the state. That’s politics meeting certification. But the certification that matters most didn’t come from a governor or a commissioner. It came from the NFL’s own growth data telling the league that its future audience is already defined — and that audience is bilingual, young, Latino and already here.

What the Performance Actually Said

Bad Bunny opened walking through a set designed to resemble Puerto Rico’s sugarcane fields. He wore an all-white jersey with “Ocasio” — his actual surname — on the back. He performed almost entirely in Spanish, brought out Lady Gaga for a salsa-inflected rendition of “Die With a Smile,” included a surprise appearance from Ricky Martin, and closed by naming countries across the Americas while declaring “God Bless America” — expanding the word to its continental meaning.

He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t code-switch. He didn’t dilute. He performed as himself, in his language, from his culture, on the biggest stage in American media — because the culture had already done the work of proving he belonged there. The NFL simply caught up.

That’s the part both the celebration and the outrage keep missing. This wasn’t a door being opened. The door was already open. The NFL just walked through it last.

The Real Signal

Sports provide the audience. Culture defines who the future audience is. Large systems that persist don’t debate identity — they align with momentum. The NFL looked at where cultural gravity had already moved and made the only decision its data supported.

Bad Bunny on that stage says one thing clearly: the center has already shifted. The halftime show didn’t move it. The halftime show acknowledged it. Everything else — the Truth Social posts, the counterprogramming, the cable news segments — is the sound of people arguing about a question that was already answered.

When the most commercially powerful institution in American sports selects a performer based on where cultural gravity already sits rather than where political consensus wants it to be, does the resulting backlash represent a genuine dispute about national identity — or the last stage of recognizing that the shift already happened without anyone’s permission?

Sources

This report was compiled using information from ABC News’ coverage of the halftime performance, NBC News’ cultural analysis of the show, CBS News’ reporting on the performance and its symbolism, CNN’s coverage of Trump’s reaction and Spanish-speaker data, Fox News’ reporting on the conservative backlash, TIME’s reporting on Trump’s criticism, The Hollywood Reporter’s cultural take on the performance, Slate’s cultural analysis, Euronews’ coverage of global reaction, CNBC/NBC Los Angeles’ analysis of NFL Latino audience strategy, and the NFL’s official Por La Cultura campaign page.

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