The Super Bowl: a name associated with the most-watched sporting event in America, a cultural phenomenon, a musical honour, and, increasingly, a political statement.
As one of the largest sporting events globally, the NFL championship game has long held serious entertainment value both in its sporting spectacle and its promise of a coveted performance platform. Yet in recent years, the Super Bowl has been evolving into a new cultural sphere, carrying with it considerable political signalling.
This year, almost 130 million people tuned into the Superbowl to watch Bad Bunny’s halftime show. The performance by the outspoken Trump critic, alongside Green Day’s vocal ICE call out mid-show, followed the trend of unprecedented politicisation in light of America’s current darkening and precarious political environment. The provoked political reaction to this half-time show lineup was considerable. Whilst Bad Bunny’s 12-minute show had millions hooked, somewhere in Atlanta, Turning Point USA protested by orchestrating a rival show.
A ‘real show’, for ‘real Americans’, the All American Halftime Show contested the Puerto Rican’s performance, turning the Super Bowl’s halftime show into a cultural battleground. As an American non-profit organisation founded by late far-right activist Charlie Kirk, the aforementioned conservative advocacy group promoted their show as a celebration of ‘faith’, ‘family’, and ‘freedom’. The lineup featured Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, Gabby Barrett, and Lee Brice, who all performed under this patriotic counterprogramming to reclaim the stage for ‘under-served’ right-wing views.
The competing half-time performances revealed the stark contrast between the idea of America each show celebrated. Brantley Gilbert opened his performance shouting ‘this is real America’ before launching into his modern rock/country song “Real America”. Meanwhile, Bad Bunny closed his show naming and celebrating every single nation in the Americas, from North to South, whilst holding an American football decorated with the slogan, “Together, We are America”.
The clash of political statements was evident. Yet Turning Point spent most of its focus paying tribute to its late founder, Charlie Kirk. In all its anticipation for being a rival show, it failed to mention anything surrounding Bad Bunny, the Super Bowl, or even the NFL. In all honesty, the show truly could have been any generically patriotic American concert, instead of an intentionally political protest.
Despite all their MAGA glory, not even the American President was drawn to the conservative lure of Turning Point’s halftime show. Failing to even acknowledge its existence, Trump instead focused all his efforts by taking to Truth Social to slate Bad Bunny’s performance. Whilst his words were seemingly designed to dismiss the performance, all his ruminations proved was that even POTUS was more tuned in to Bad Bunny than the conservative, ‘real American’ show, thus evidencing where the real cultural power lay.
From beginning to end, the whole rollout of the rival show amassed to one huge flop. Hours before it even got to air, Turning Point had to announce they would not be able to stream on X due to licensing restrictions. Not even Elon Musk was willing to give his endorsement, and that streaming limitation inevitably lost them a huge audience. Viewership figures told their own story, as Turning Point attracted only 4% of the viewing numbers of Bad Bunny’s performance. Their numbers stood at 6.1 million (a figure yet to be officially confirmed, thus heavily contested) for just under an hour and a half, whilst Bad Bunny managed to rake in a whopping 128.2 million viewers.
But the disappointments didn’t end there. Whilst Trump critiqued Bad Bunny’s dancing for not being ‘family friendly’, headlining country rapper Kid Rock came under heavy fire right before the show with the lyrics of one of his songs resurfacing to reveal a reference to liking underage girls. His overall presence seemed to undermine the rival show’s credibility, as he proceeded to spend most of his performance missing his cues– exposing everyone to the wildly obvious lip-syncing he attempted – whilst the audio track played with him metres away from the microphone. Filmed in an undisclosed location in Atlanta, the show had been pre-taped, meaning they had all the opportunities for post-production polish. Nevertheless, this was the presentation they chose, evidencing the standards and quality of ‘real America’.
Beyond its political stance, Turning Point’s Halftime show was met with heavy critique for being boring and bland, and ultimately failed to match the cultural weight it sought to challenge. Failing greatly to eclipse Bad Bunny’s halftime spectacle, the event had little to show except hollow patriotism and performance quality issues. Confirmed for a repeat offence in 2027, it should be fascinating to see where this performative nationalism goes next.
“Turning Point USA logo” by tpusa is marked with CC0 1.0.