Bad Bunny has one number-one hit. It was Cardi B’s song.
That’s the artist the NFL chose to headline the biggest musical performance in America. And the league would really prefer you not think about it too hard.
The sales pitch has been relentless. Roger Goodell has called Bad Bunny “one of the greatest artists in the world” so many times it’s starting to sound like he’s trying to convince himself. Jay-Z waved away the backlash. The league trotted out every stat it could find to make the pick feel inevitable. But the numbers the NFL keeps shouting from the rooftop and the numbers it’s hoping you never Google tell two very different stories.
The Streaming Illusion
LMAOO.. they asked NFL players what their favorite Bad Bunny song was, and NONE of them could name one.
One player even said, “I don’t listen to Bad Bunny like that, but she has some good stuff..” 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/I1E92AIWAl
— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) February 6, 2026
Here’s the stat you’ll hear on every broadcast Sunday: Bad Bunny was Spotify’s most-streamed artist on the planet in 2025. 19.8 billion streams. Sounds like a slam dunk. Now here’s the stat they won’t mention: in the United States, he wasn’t even top four. Taylor Swift, Drake, Morgan Wallen, and Kendrick Lamar all ranked above him. The Super Bowl isn’t a global Spotify playlist. It’s 130 million Americans watching from their living rooms — and most of them couldn’t name a single Bad Bunny song if you spotted them the first three words.
The NFL took a global metric and applied it to a distinctly American stage. That’s not bold programming. That’s a misread.
The Billboard Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
🔥🚨BREAKING: Football fans are ‘absolutely fed up’ with the NFL after 2026 Super Bowl headline artist Bad Bunny announced: You “Learn Spanish” if you want to understand my Super Bowl halftime show during his SNL appearance. pic.twitter.com/zhErHHK4Wn
— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) October 5, 2025
Bad Bunny has 113 entries on the Billboard Hot 100. That sounds massive until you look at where they actually landed. One number-one — “I Like It” with Cardi B and J Balvin in 2018. One. And that was Cardi’s record. He’s scored top-10 hits since — “DtMF” climbed to number two, “Baile Inolvidable” hit three — but none that crossed into the kind of universal American singalong territory that halftime demands.
Now think about who’s stood on that stage recently. Beyoncé. Lady Gaga. Kendrick Lamar. Usher. These are artists whose catalogs are so embedded in American culture that your grandmother, your barber, and your Uber driver all know the words. Bad Bunny is massive in his lane. But the Super Bowl halftime show doesn’t have lanes. It has one enormous room, and everyone in it needs a reason to stay.
The Part the NFL Really Doesn’t Want You Thinking About
Forget the music for a second. Look at the timing.
Bad Bunny endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024. He’s been in a public feud with Trump since 2017. His song “Nuevayol” ends with a fake Trump apologizing to immigrants. He pulled every U.S. date from his 2025 tour because he said ICE might raid the venues — then said yes to the single most high-profile event in the country. One week before the Super Bowl, he stood at the Grammy podium and his first words were: “ICE out.”
The President called the pick “terrible” and said he wouldn’t show up. Homeland Security threatened ICE presence at the stadium. Turning Point USA set up a rival halftime show with Kid Rock. A national poll found Americans split almost perfectly down the middle on Bad Bunny — 35% favorable, 32% unfavorable. Over 100,000 people signed a petition to replace him with George Strait.
This is what “unity” looks like, according to the NFL.
This is Bad Bunny.
This is who the @NFL and deviant Jay-Z have playing the half-time show at the Super Bowl.
This is the guy, Bad Bunny, the NFL chose to perform at halftime during the Super Bowl, an American sport, sitting, seemingly refusing to stand for God Bless America during the Yankees playoff game.
I know he doesn’t represent most Puerto Ricans. I hope he gets booed at the SB. pic.twitter.com/4THviYyUkA
— 👉M-Û-R-Č-H👈 (@TheEXECUTlONER_) October 12, 2025
There’s a version of this pick that makes sense on a spreadsheet. The league has 39 million Latino fans in the U.S. and a growth strategy that depends on reaching them. Nobody disputes that. But the Super Bowl halftime show was never supposed to be a growth hack. It was supposed to be the one moment all of America watches together. The league didn’t just pick a performer half the country doesn’t know. They picked one who has spent the last year making sure the other half can’t ignore him for reasons that have nothing to do with music.
On Sunday, 130 million Americans will watch an artist they can’t sing along with, performing songs most of them have never heard, in a stadium half of them think he shouldn’t be in. The NFL calls that progress.