The last thing on screen was a single line: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Before that, for roughly a quarter of an hour on February 8, 2026, Bad Bunny turned the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show into Puerto Rico. Sugar cane and palm trees covered the field, cane farmers in pavas walked past a piragua cart, and, according to a source close to the production, a real couple got married. The set was sung mostly in Spanish, the first time a halftime headliner had done that, according to CBS News.
Nielsen says the show averaged 128.2 million viewers in the US. He didn’t adapt himself for that audience. He asked it to come to him, and treated the biggest stage in American television as the opening of a longer campaign.
The Booking Was Already a Statement
Apple Music, the NFL and Roc Nation announced Bad Bunny as the headliner on September 28, 2025. His statement was clear about who the show was for. “What I’m feeling goes beyond myself,” he said, and later in the same statement: “this is for my people, my culture, and our history.”
By the time he walked out at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, the context had grown. A week earlier, Debí Tirar Más Fotos had won Album of the Year at the Grammys. He arrived at the Super Bowl as the reigning Album of the Year winner, not as a guest in someone else’s format.
For a related look at how he has run album campaigns, see our earlier piece on Bad Bunny’s rollout strategies.
Staging as Cultural Positioning
A halftime show can be built around spectacle: lights, pyrotechnics, a parade of hits. Bad Bunny built his around a place.
CBS News described the staging in detail. The field was dressed with palm trees, sugar cane and other plants native to Puerto Rico. Performers included cane farmers in pavas, a coconut seller, a piragua cart and boxers. He climbed an electrical pole, a nod to the island’s blackouts. In one vignette he handed a Grammy to a young boy.
Not every viewer would have known those references. That is the strategy. Specific details make people curious, and curious people search, rewatch and share. A generic show is easy to forget. One built on a real place gives viewers something to look up afterwards.
Guests Who Came Into His World
Two guest performers shared the stage, and both entered on his terms.
Lady Gaga sang a Latin-flavoured version of her duet “Die With a Smile” and then joined him for “BAILE INoLVIDABLE”. Ricky Martin performed “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii”, a Bad Bunny song about gentrification in Puerto Rico.
Gaga is the bigger name for much of the English-speaking audience, but the arrangement moved her song toward his sound, not the other way round. For viewers who came for her, the bridge led straight into his catalogue.
The Zara Play
Fashion was the other half of the plan.
Bad Bunny performed in a custom, all-cream Zara look: a collared shirt and tie, matching chinos and a boxy football-style jersey with “OCASIO 64” on the back. He told Harper’s Bazaar it honoured his late uncle, Tio Cutito, his mother’s brother: Ocasio was his uncle’s surname and 1964 his birth year. On his feet was an all-white version of his signature adidas BadBo 1.0. Choosing a Spanish high-street retailer over a luxury house, on that stage, was a statement in itself.
It also turned out to be the first chapter of a product story. According to FashionUnited, the partnership with Zara began with the halftime outfits and continued with the black tuxedo he wore to the Met Gala on May 4, all co-designed with the brand. Then came the collection:
- May 16: a surprise early release at the Zara store in Plaza Las Américas, San Juan.
- May 21: Benito Antonio, a 150-piece genderless capsule priced from €19.95 to €129, launched online worldwide and in selected stores in 41 markets.
The collection took its name from his legal first names, not his stage name. Watched again in May, the halftime outfit reads as a three-month preview.
What the Platform Saw
Apple Music sponsored the show and published its own data around it, which gives a rare look at how a moment like this moves listening.
The lift started before the game. After the official trailer came out on January 16, plays of “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” rose 54% in the US and 36% globally, with growth in Canada (60%), the UK (54%) and Brazil (43%). Lyrics views in the US rose 119%. The pre-game press conference became, in Apple’s words, “the most watched in Super Bowl history”, with more than 63 million views across related content in its first 48 hours.
After the show, his listens on Apple Music were up 7x. The most-streamed songs were “DtMF”, “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” and “Tití Me Preguntó”, the song that opened his set.
The wider numbers were just as big. Counting fans, broadcast partners and other accounts, the show drew 4 billion social media views in its first 24 hours, according to the NFL and Ripple Analytics. On the NFL’s own social accounts, more than 55% of views came from outside the US. On Telemundo, the halftime averaged 4.8 million viewers, the most-watched Super Bowl halftime in Spanish-language history.
One detail is easy to miss. The trailer and the press conference were release moments in their own right, weeks and days before the performance.
Lessons for Independent Artists
You will not headline a Super Bowl. You will get bigger rooms than usual: a festival slot, a support tour, a TV spot, a viral week. The same principles apply.
Don’t shrink yourself for a bigger audience. The specific, local, personal details are what new listeners remember. Bad Bunny sang mostly in Spanish on an English-language network broadcast, and his Apple Music listens still went up 7x.
Bring guests into your sound. A feature or a cameo works best when the guest’s fans are led into your world. Ask how a collaborator’s song would sound in your style before asking how you would sound in theirs.
Use the big moment to start something. The halftime outfit led to a fashion line three months later. Plan what follows your biggest show, whether that is a single, a merch drop or a tour date, before the show happens.
Treat the build-up as content. The trailer lifted listening and the press conference drew millions of views before a note was sung. Your announcement post, rehearsal clips and behind-the-scenes footage are part of the release.
Have your catalogue ready. Listening jumped the moment the show ended. Before any spike in attention, check that your artist profiles, links and metadata are in order so new listeners land somewhere complete. If you are thinking about how attention converts across platforms, our post on how labels use fan data for growth is a useful next read.
The closing line on that screen was about love and hate. The strategy behind it was simpler. Be exactly who you are, at full volume, in the biggest room you are offered.
