On paper, Bad Bunny is the Super Bowl halftime performer you’d expect the NFL to hate. Most of the league’s owners lean Republican and give to Republican causes, and MAGA influencers have framed the Puerto Rican megastar as a “woke” musician who will bash the United States in Spanish and wear dresses during his performance. But as ESPN’s deep dive into the halftime decision notes, those NFL owners, as conservative as they may be, are looking to expand the NFL’s reach. That means reaching out to Latinos in this country and bumping up the league’s international footprint into regions that include Latin America. Indeed, “the massive Trump hater,” as MAGA commentator Benny Johnson called Bad Bunny last year, is exactly who the NFL wants and needs.
Forget “celebrate.” A “mixed culture” is something the MAGA world has decided it can’t even tolerate.
“I think it’s awesome, and I think our Latino fan base is amazing,” Charlotte Jones, the Dallas Cowboys’ chief brand officer and daughter of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, told Katie Miller — wife of the immigrant-bashing White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — on Miller’s podcast in November about the selection of Bad Bunny as the halftime performer for Super Bowl 60. “We are on a global stage, and we can’t ever forget that. We have a mixed culture, and our whole society is based on immigrants who have come here and founded our country, and I think we can celebrate that.”
Forget “celebrate.” A “mixed culture” is something the MAGA world has decided it can’t even tolerate. That xenophobia is driving MAGA’s deportation push and the outrage to Bad Bunny. “To bring in a performer who is going to be the majority performing in Spanish, I think it’s sort of disrespectful to all the people who aren’t even going to understand what the hell is going on,” one conservative influencer told The Wall Street Journal.
President Donald Trump, who always picks division over unity, has called the Bad Bunny selection “ridiculous,” and said he and Green Day, the Super Bowl pregame act, are there to just “sow hatred.”
But in a Grammy award acceptance speech from a week ago that he started by saying “ICE out,” Bad Bunny explained, “We don’t hate them, we love our people, we love our family, and that’s the way to do it — with love.”
As much as MAGA might scream foul — and even stage an alternate halftime show headlined by Kid Rock, in this case at least, the NFL doesn’t care about their feelings. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio was the world’s most streamed artist in 2025. And in 2022, 2021 and 2020. That’s why the NFL, which CNBC calls the “most valuable and profitable sports league in the world,” is willing to absorb MAGA outrage and take the risk that Bad Bunny will make a political statement that offends conservatives. There’s more money to make.
In 2024, NFL games accounted for 70% of the most-watched U.S. telecasts. That means there may be no more room for the league to expand domestically. To keep growing, the league needs new audiences, and nobody’s better positioned to attract a global audience than Bad Bunny.
For MS NOW in January 2025, I wrote, “A kind of reggaeton Bob Dylan, Bad Bunny has won Puerto Ricans’ hearts because he prioritizes them and their interests above everybody else.” Earlier that month, Bad Bunny had released “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” — which translates to “I Should’ve Taken More Photos” — an album he had described as his “most Puerto Rican” album ever. And as I wrote then, “There’s a deep understanding in Bad Bunny’s music, a feeling that his art offers a vision for all Puerto Ricans, on the island or in the diaspora,” and I singled out songs that I said “drip with Puerto Rican pride.” It is a point Bad Bunny himself reiterated days before Sunday’s show, noting that he wants to bring “a lot of my culture” to his much anticipated performance.
I think he’ll have a great performance.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell
My larger point, though, was that Bad Bunny is more than just an amazing musician; he’s a better political leader than the people who are officially in charge on the island. He held a 30-day residency in San Juan last year instead of performing on the U.S. mainland because, he said, he didn’t want people coming to hear him to be vulnerable to ICE raids.
When asked about Bad Bunny’s “ICE out” remarks at last Sunday’s Grammys, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell punted and focused more on how Bad Bunny was using his platform “to unite people and to be able to bring people together, with their creativity and their talents, and be able to use this moment to do that.”
“I think artists in the past have done that. I think Bad Bunny understands that, and I think he’ll have a great performance,” Goodell added.
The halftime show will stoke MAGA ire, but the NFL doesn’t appear worried that a significant percent will be so mad they’ll stop watching football. Trump and his MAGA crowd can just stew in the past of a lost America and watch their very white and weird counterprogramming halftime show with Kid Rock and other randoms, while the rest of the country and the world will enjoy what should be Bad Bunny’s unforgettable dance.
For once, the NFL is on the right side of the culture, not because it supports Bad Bunny or his politics, but because it wants the money he will bring.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter.
