Outside the Beltway

A Bad Bunny Observation or Two

It's Super Bowl week!

Steven L. Taylor · Tuesday, February 3, 2026 · 7 comments

I am, no doubt, ignoring a large number of more important issues to write this post, but let me add a thought or two to my post from October about Bad Bunny being the headliner at this weekend’s Super Bowl. But, you know, it is in the news, as per FNC: Tommy Tuberville says Super Bowl is ‘getting more and more woke’ with Bad Bunny’s halftime show.

I will start by acknowledging that it was inevitable that choosing Bad Bunny as the headliner for the halftime show would be perceived as political by right-wing commenters who would then stir the culture war pot and get a bunch of people who almost certainly had never heard of him to get upset. After all, he sings in Spanish and it overlty political in his music (indeed, I was on a panel at a Latin American studies conference where one of the papers was on Puerto Rico and Bad Bunny’s music was part of the discussion). Moreover, he has been vocally anti-ICE even before the current mess in Minneapolis.

I would further add: to anyone who is upset about Bad Bunny’s appearance, but the only reason you know about Bad Bunny is because of the commentary around his appearance, I might suggest that you are allowing yourself to be manipulated. An honest question for some introspection: if Bad Bunny had just shown up on your screen during halftime, would you really have cared if you hadn’t been stirred up? I mean, when was the last time you really even knew anything about the halftime act?

Having said all that, not choosing a specific act because it might upset someone’s politics is also a political choice. Trying to choose someone who is so plain vanilla that no one will be offended is, likewise, a political choice. There is politics in all the things, especially in our current politicized environment.

Side note: it is especially tiresome for people on the rightward side of things to get upset about things being politicized when Trump is constantly on Truth Social, or in press conferences, politicizing everything to include his varying levels of sympathy for the Good and Pretti families based on which set of parents were Trump fans.

Setting aside the state of America’s polarized culture wars, the thing that I always find kind of amazing about this kind of outrage, especially by conservatives, is how brazenly it was a business decision. Aren’t Republicans supposed to be the party of business and the market?

I point this out to perhaps remind any conservative reading this of where their convictions allegedly lie, but also to simply note the obvious: the NFL is not having Bad Bunny perform to send some liberal, anti-ICE message. They are having him perform for their bottom line.

I don’t think we can look at the league’s general response to Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling and assert it is some kindof wokster progressive institution. And while one can argue that Breast Cancer Awareness Month could be coded “liberal,” it is also true that Military Awareness Month could be coded more “conservative.” Note that breast cancer awareness morphed into a more general cancer awareness focus about a decade ago.

But what does any of this have to do with Bad Bunny? Bad Bunny is part of the league’s voracious appetite for expanding its audience, which includes Latino audiences in the US and abroad, and young people.

If you look at studies of the demographics of NFL fans, one finds out that the modal fan is an older male. I suspect that one could include the modifier white as well, but I can’t confirm that variable.

For example, according to a recent S&P Global study: “The demographic breakdown of NFL viewers reveals a significant age disparity in the US, where nearly half (47%) of viewers are aged 55 and older, while only 17% are young adults under 35.” Another report from SponsorPulse found, “Fans engaged with the most intensity skew older and male. Of the 58% of Americans that do engage on a weekly basis, 73% are Male, aged 50+.”

So, if Bad Bunny doesn’t appeal to a middle-aged dude, well, they aren’t using Bad Bunny to draw you in; they already have you.

It seems worth noting that Bad Bunny is immensely popular. In 2025, he was the most-streamed artist on Spotify for the fourth time since 2020. He had 19.8 billion streams last year (for the record, that is a tad higher than Ancient Geeks).

So, what is obviously going on here? Is it a wokity-woke DEI booking meant to upset MAGA? Or is it a pretty blatant attempt to appeal to young viewers, and especially young Latino viewers? See, for example, this 2024 NPR piece: Latinos are the fastest-growing fanbase in the NFL. What’s the league’s playbook?

Call me crazy, but maybe having one of the most popular musical acts in the United States right now, who happens to be a Latino, headline the Super Bowl Halftime show might just be a business decision.

Another side note: the alternative TPUSA halftime show will air on their social media channels, such as YouTube, X, and Rumble. How many people, especially in older demographics, are going to fumble around with their smart TVs (if they have one) in the middle of the Super Bowl to figure out if they have the X or YouTube app installed on their TVs?

I have this vision of Tommy Tuberville asking his son, “What channel is that Kid Rock show on?” and having one of his kids say, “It’s on Rumble,” and then Tommy asking, remote in hand, “Which number is Rumble?”