The Roll Up: October 14, 2025 

TL;DR:  The headlining artist at the Super Bowl was once a matter that generated almost no publicity before the game. But like nearly everything else these days, it's now become a political football. The NFL's announcement that Bad Bunny would play the halftime show next February ignited a firestorm of both anger toward and support for the singer. Rolli IQ analysis shows English-language social media has erupted over an artist it hardly noticed before. Here's what we know:

Picture credit: Heute

Super Bowls have become as much about the commercials and the halftime show as they are about the football games. Those halftime shows have come a long way since Super Bowl I, when the featured performers were marching bands from the University of Arizona and Grambling State University, trumpeter Al Hirt and a high school(!) drill team from Anaheim, California. Now, party-goers number in the tens of millions on game day, all awaiting performances from artists as big as Kendrick Lamar, Usher and Rihanna. 

Those big artists generate a lot of publicity during their performances, but the singer slated to headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show generated massive publicity without singing a note yet. The NFL announced Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl LX musical guest during the Cowboys/Packers game on September 28. Ever since, social media can't leave the Puerto Rican superstar alone.

Bad Bunny (given name Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio) isn't new to the music scene. He rose to prominence nearly ten years ago, bringing Spanish-language rap into the spotlight worldwide as a Latin trap and reggaeton artist. But white audiences in the mainland U.S. are less familiar with his work. The Super Bowl announcement means many more Americans now know about Bad Bunny, even if that knowledge prompts anger. Using Rolli IQ social media intelligence, it's possible to see just what a splash the performer has made on English-language social media. To do that, we're comparing English engagement regarding Bad Bunny from a fifteen-day period one year ago to the fifteen days this year following the Super Bowl announcement.  

2024 Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for "Bad" and "Bunny"

Looking at last year, Rolli IQ AI shows a modest amount of traffic about the rapper. In the fifteen-day period starting September 28, 2024, the singer averaged about 650 mentions per day, leading to just shy of 40,000 engagements per day. By comparison, Kendrick Lamar, set to play the 2025 Super Bowl, was averaging about 1200 mentions and a whopping 309,000 engagements per day during the same period.

The nature of the engagement about Bad Bunny last year was almost entirely about his music. Rolli IQ AI shows the users debated the artist's skills, cooed over his record one billion+ streams on Spotify and compared him to other favorites. 

2024 Rolli IQ AI Summary for "Bad" and "Bunny"

Moving forward to 2025, English-language social media users in the U.S. and worldwide have definitely taken notice of Bad Bunny. In the fifteen days since the Super Bowl announcement, traffic surrounding the artist has exploded. Rolli IQ shows total mentions are up five-fold, while engagements are up 1300 percent from one year ago. 

2025 Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for "Bad" and "Bunny"

The main reason for the increase is, of course, the Super Bowl halftime gig. But a look at the Rolli IQ AI analysis shows the nature of social media posts and engagements have changed drastically. Gone are the comments about his artistic achievements, replaced with anger over Bad Bunny's comments that Americans need to learn Spanish, calls for his deportation (despite the fact he is a U.S. citizen) and criticism that his pick to play the halftime was political. Others still came to the singer's defense as both an artist and an American citizen.

2025 Rolli IQ AI Summary for "Bad" and "Bunny"

Diving deeper into the political comments using Rolli IQ's Topic Tree function, we get a sample of the sort of anger present in the political posts--anger not present a year ago. Much of the political pushback came around the subject of Spanish being the language in which the singer performs. Bad Bunny generated many of these posts himself when he joked on Saturday Night Live that Americans have four months to learn Spanish.

2025 Rolli IQ Topic Tree excerpt for "Bad" and "Bunny"

Examining individual posts cataloged by Rolli IQ shows the approach many have called racist in criticizing the Bad Bunny appearance. Conservative media host Benny Johnson posted on Twitter/X "breaking news" that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem planned to send ICE agents to "enforce" at the halftime show. This despite the fact Bad Bunny is a U.S. Citizen.

Others called for Christian and American performers to appear in the game's halftime show, prompting responses like this one from Twitter/X user @souljagoyteller noting that Bad Bunny is both Christian and American. 

The bottom line is that the analysis using Rolli IQ to look at social media posts about rapper Bad Bunny in the weeks since his announcement as the Super Bowl LX halftime performer shows a dramatic increase in English-language posts about the singer, driven by anger at his selection and showing a disregard or ignorance surrounding the facts of his U.S. citizenship.