Bad Bunny, the Super Bowl, and Who Gets to Be “American”
Eric Rojas
SAVE THE DATE — Sunday, February 8, 2026 Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara—and Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny is the halftime headliner.
Predictably, the news fired up the ole outrage machine. He sings in Spanish. This is America. The chorus bellows. To which I’d offer a small history lesson and a larger point about who we are.
Puerto Ricans are Americans. Full stop. The island has been a U.S. territory since 1898, and Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917 under the Jones–Shafroth Act. You don’t age out of facts because a pundit got mad on cable.
As for the “English-only” talking point—it’s lazy. The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, and the reality is that the idea is largely a fantasy. More than one in five people in the U.S. (22%) speak a language other than English at home, and Spanish is by far the most common. That’s not “niche”; that’s America.
The Audience Is Already Here
The “slipping” football numbers aren’t collapse — they’re a redistribution of attention. Younger, bilingual, and Latino fans are already heavily engaged (and spending) in U.S. sports, especially soccer. Halftime is customer acquisition, not a nostalgia break.
Let’s talk numbers, not vibes.
The NFL’s 2024–25 regular season audience slipped ~2.2% year-over-year to an average of 17.5M viewers per game. The league is still a juggernaut, but growth isn’t guaranteed.
Even so, the Super Bowl continues to break records—127.7 million watched in February 2025. That tells me the tentpole still commands attention, but it needs fresh energy.
Meanwhile, Hispanic sports fans are driving significant surges in soccer viewership—from Copa América to the Euro Final—and they are highly engaged, loyal, and willing to spend. If you want tomorrow’s audience, meet the one that’s already here.
None of this means football is failing. It means the marketplace is changing. Soccer’s rise in the U.S. (supercharged by Latino audiences and a World Cup on home soil next year) is not a threat to the NFL; it’s a signal. Culture moves. Smart leagues move with it.
Why This Halftime Choice Is Right
Putting Bad Bunny on the biggest stage in American sports is not “politics.” It’s product strategy.
Cultural fit: He’s one of the few artists who can cut across language, geography, and age without sanding off who he is. That’s what “American” looks like now.
Audience expansion: You don’t wait for new fans to stumble in—you program for them. Halftime is the rare moment where football can invite in a different crowd and keep them around for the fourth quarter.
Signal value: Booking a Puerto Rican global superstar tells tens of millions of U.S. Latinos: We see you. You belong here. That’s not pandering; that’s alignment with the actual country we live in.
And yes, the “Americans must speak English” crowd will keep mouth-breathing into the comments. But the scoreboard isn’t theirs anymore. The data says Spanish lives here—loudly—and those fans are already shaping U.S. sports economics.
So no, the backlash isn’t about patriotism. It’s about refusing to update an old story. Bad Bunny at halftime isn’t a departure from America; it’s a mirror. On February 8, we’ll see exactly who’s looking.
Sources
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens since 1917 (Jones–Shafroth Act, Library of Congress). Research Guides+1
Language in America: Nearly 22% of Americans speak a language other than English at home; Spanish is the most prevalent. AP News
ACS detailed language tables (reference). Census Data
Hispanic/Spanish-speaking immigrants: 86% of Hispanic immigrants speak Spanish at home (KFF). KFF
Unauthorized immigrant language profile: 72% speak Spanish at home (MPI). migrationpolicy.org
English-official-language executive order in 2025 (context). The Washington Post
NFL 2024–25 regular-season audience slipped ~2.2%. S&P Global
Super Bowl LIX set a U.S. viewership record (127.7M). AP News
Hispanic fans’ outsized role in sports growth (Nielsen). Nielsen+1
Soccer viewership growth in the U.S. (+~60% for non-USA matches 2018→2024). samford.e
