Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show was the most watched in the event’s history, producer Roc Nation has announced.
The Puerto Rican singer and rapper took the prestigious mid-game performance slot during February’s NFL championship game, where he made history with the first Super Bowl show to be performed mostly in Spanish.
On stage, Bad Bunny, 31, treated the crowd and viewers at home to a high energy medley of more than a dozen songs, and concluded the show holding an American football bearing the words: “Together, we are America.”
On Monday (2 March), Roc Nation – Jay-Z’s entertainment company which has produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019 – announced that Bad Bunny’s show had amassed more than 4.1 billion views worldwide in its first 24 hours.
Speaking alongside Apple Music, Roc Nation said that this total took into account global and US broadcasts, YouTube and “digital properties”, and made it the most watched halftime show in history.
While these worldwide numbers have not been independently confirmed, Nielsen previously reported that 128.2 million viewers on home soil in the US tuned into the 2026 halftime show. While undeniably impressive, this number fell slightly short of the record set in 2025, when 133.5 million viewers tuned in for Kendrick Lamar’s show.
Bad Bunny – real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – used his performance at the halftime show to celebrate Puerto Rico and wider Latin culture. Performing in front of a sign that read: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” he told the crowd, “God bless America,” before listing the names of every country in the Americas.
His appointment drew the ire of the American right, with Donald Trump initially calling the Grammy winner a “terrible choice” who he claimed “sows hatred” due to his past criticism of the president’s ICE raids. During the show, the president criticised the show as “terrible”, writing on Truth Social: “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying.”
MAGA supporters urged people to watch Kid Rock’s alternative Turning Point USA show instead, however Bad Bunny’s halftime performance still appeared to be playing at the president’s watch party at Trump International Golf Club in Florida.
Meanwhile, 6.1 million people tuned into the YouTube livestream of Turning Point USA’s “All-American” rival halftime show, which featured performances by a line-up of white country singers. It currently has around 21 million views on YouTube.
© Independent Digital News & Media Ltd