Bad Bunny and the Profitable Right-Wing Outrage Machine

Ian Haworth
Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:32:26 -0800
Opinion

The Super Bowl is one of the highlights of the sporting calendar, attracting millions of viewers worldwide year after year, and sparking the beginning of the long and difficult football-free season where we must survive on a meager diet of non-contact sports such as basketball and soccer. But for certain non-sports fans whose sole joy in life is found in complaining about anything and everything online, the Super Bowl has nothing to do with football and everything to do with the halftime show.

This year, too many commentators — many of whom have about as much football knowledge as Tim Walz, who famously warned that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "could run a mean pick 6" — went into overdrive in their attempt to spark a backlash against halftime performer Bad Bunny.

I'll confess, I had no idea who Bad Bunny is. Honestly, I still don't. For all I know, he's a distant relation of Bugs Bunny, the Energizer Bunny or the Easter Bunny, but apparently he's very popular, delivering a performance on Sunday that garnered millions of additional views for the NFL and sent the right-wing influencer class into a manic state.
Updated: Tue Feb 10, 2026

The Super Bowl is one of the highlights of the sporting calendar, attracting millions of viewers worldwide year after year, and sparking the beginning of the long and difficult football-free season where we must survive on a meager diet of non-contact sports such as basketball and soccer. But for certain non-sports fans whose sole joy in life is found in complaining about anything and everything online, the Super Bowl has nothing to do with football and everything to do with the halftime show.

This year, too many commentators — many of whom have about as much football knowledge as Tim Walz, who famously warned that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "could run a mean pick 6" — went into overdrive in their attempt to spark a backlash against halftime performer Bad Bunny.

I'll confess, I had no idea who Bad Bunny is. Honestly, I still don't. For all I know, he's a distant relation of Bugs Bunny, the Energizer Bunny or the Easter Bunny, but apparently he's very popular, delivering a performance on Sunday that garnered millions of additional views for the NFL and sent the right-wing influencer class into a manic state.

Sure, it's fine to think that the performance was good or bad, and it's even fine to calmly critique obvious political messages within the performance, such as the conflation of "God Bless America" with the entire Western hemisphere, as if we share anything with Venezuela, Mexico or — heaven forfend — Canada. It's also fine, by the way, to not care at all. But if your sole focus on Monday morning is not the game but the halftime show, I'm sorry, you're not a serious person, and certainly not a sports fan.

And if Bad Bunny's selection as halftime performer did send you into a social media fury, it's important to understand that your expression of outrage only rewards the NFL for their decision.

The National Football League's primary goal is to make professional football as profitable as possible, and the purpose of the halftime show is to expand their audience in order to expand their profit base. The NFL has absolutely nothing to gain from a halftime performance that appeals only to people who are already tuning in for the football, while the NFL has everything to gain from a halftime performance that appeals to people who couldn't care less about whether the Patriots or the Seahawks even showed up to the game.

To be fair, one of them didn't...

Then there's the issue of marketing. It is in the NFL's best interest to not only pick a performer who will bring in a new audience, but to navigate the tightrope of controversy to ensure that the reliable online outrage machine will provide them with millions of dollars of free advertising.

Time after time, controversy is intentionally manufactured in order to spark a predictable reaction, and Bad Bunny was no different. So, if you despise Bad Bunny and his performance, do you think making him and his performance go viral on social media hurt or helped the effort to convince the NFL to choose someone else?

No, in the future, if you want halftime performers that — for example — have a single English lyric, resist the temptation to flood the internet with your fury, because as long as it's true that any attention is good attention, your fury is seen as nothing more than dollar signs for the NFL.