Bad Bunny’s halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl drew a massive 128.2 million viewers, but fell short of the record set last year when 133.5 million viewers tuned in to watch Kendrick Lamar.
The Puerto Rican superstar’s showstopping Sunday performance came midway through the NFL championship game between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots, which was itself watched by an average of 124.9 million people, according to new data published by Nielsen.
Viewership peaked during the second quarter of the game when 137.8 million people were watching simultaneously, the highest peak viewership in U.S. television history.
While Bad Bunny may not have broken Lamar’s record, he did easily exceed the 6.1 million people who tuned in to the YouTube livestream of the right-wing organization Turning Point USA’s rival All-American halftime show, headlined by country singer Kid Rock.
The alternative MAGA event was held in protest of Bad Bunny’s selection as the 2026 Super Bowl halftime star. After he was announced last September, he faced a barrage of MAGA hate, including from Donald Trump, who slammed him as a “terrible choice” that “sows hatred” due to his past criticism of the president’s ICE raids.
During Bad Bunny’s 13-minute, high-energy set, he managed to squeeze in a medley of at least 12 songs and a handful of celebrity cameos.
His performance, widely praised by critics, was a joyous celebration of Latin culture and a call for pan-American unity. Towards the end of his performance, the “DtMF” artist, 31, was handed a football with the words, “Together, We are America,” written on it. He told the crowd, “God bless America,” before listing the names of every country in the Americas.
The Grammy-winning rapper and singer not only smashed viewership records, but he also made history as the first solo male Latin artist to headline the event. He is also the first person to perform on the NFL’s most high-profile stage entirely in a language other than English. That detail didn’t sit right with Trump, who fumed on Truth Social: “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying.”
His all-Spanish set, however, didn’t appear to deter fans, who have since rushed to Duolingo to learn the language. The popular language-learning app, said that during Bad Bunny’s halftime show, its platform experienced a significant surge in users learning Spanish as viewers seemingly turned to the app to understand the lyrics.
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In a four-star review of Bad Bunny’s show, The Independent’s Mark Beaument declared it “might even be the moment that the Latin world steals away the global musical zeitgeist from a nation folding in on itself.”
“Because this — this wild, inclusive fiesta — was Old America at its best,” he wrote.
