AP – The morning after the Seahawks were crowned Super Bowl champions, Monday found people trying to figure out who won the other hotly debated night contest: the halftime performances pitted against each other—Bad Bunny and the conservative favorite Kid Rock.
Nielsen figures won’t be released until Tuesday about how many people tuned in to watch Bad Bunny, a U.S. citizen born in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico and the NFL’s headlining act for 2026. Most years, the show attracts more than 100 million viewers.
Turning Point USA, the conservative group, staged the competing performance, and spokesperson Andrew Kolvet told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Sunday night that “at one point” roughly 10 million people were watching Kid Rock’s live performance across all social-media platforms. The group did not publish exact figures when asked on Monday morning, though at one point roughly five million people were watching the show live on YouTube.
The race to capture national attention during the nation’s most-watched event was framed as a contest to define the country, as Turning Point organized its act with the blessing of President Donald Trump to protest the NFL’s choice of the Puerto Rican star as its headliner.
The performances arrive at a moment when the United States is split, with sharp lines between supporters of Trump’s immigration policies and those opposing large-scale immigration raids in American cities. Weeks after the Super Bowl, two White American citizens were killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, a city that had been at the center of global attention during protests over George Floyd’s killing.
Bad Bunny has been a vocal and outspoken critic of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), though he did not mention the agency during his performance. Kid Rock is one of the president’s most high-profile celebrity allies.
Turning Point calls the performance a “massive success”
The “All American Halftime Show” headlined by Kid Rock included a video and a photo tribute to the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot last year on a Utah college campus.
The program lasted about 30 minutes and also featured the country musicians Brantley Gilbert, Gabby Barrett and Lee Brice. Several artists stated that the show as an alternative represented “true America,” while Kolvet told Fox News that the audience represented a “massive” success.
“People are paying attention,” he said.
The TPUSA show was also broadcast on numerous right-leaning networks, including OAN News and Trinity Broadcasting Network. The 10 million viewers Kolvet estimated would be eclipsed by the Super Bowl’s usual audience.
Kendrick Lamar set the record with 133.5 million viewers for his 2025 halftime show, topping Usher’s 2024 act which drew 123.4 million.
Bad Bunny Uses Symbolism to Emphasize Unity
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio and who became the most-streamed artist of 2025, brought an unabashed Puerto Rican culture to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
His theme was unity, and he danced and sang across the field beneath a screen that read “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” Many of the songs he performed came from his 2025 album “Debí tirar más fotos,” the first album entirely in Spanish to win a Grammy for Album of the Year.
The show did not shy away from Puerto Rico’s most pressing political inequalities and included direct references to the island’s chronic blackouts and the fight for U.S. sovereignty.
Trump, who did not attend the Super Bowl and said he would not watch Bad Bunny’s performance, called Sunday’s halftime show “one of the worst, EVER” in a post on Truth Social.
“It doesn’t make sense, it’s an affront to America’s Greatness, and it doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence,” he wrote. “This ‘Show’ is just a ‘slap in the face’ to our Country, which is setting new standards and records every day.”
