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Entertainment, sports, and politics. Three areas that are ideally suited as marketing tools, and where marketing is used extensively. The Super Bowl brings them all together in the grandest way. This year, that was in a rainbow kind of way.

The Super Bowl is almost more like a publicity event than it is a sports event. In the 1960s, you paid $37,500 for a 30-second spot. In 1995, the 1 million mark was surpassed, and this year it’s 8-10 million. And yet, the commercial airtime was already completely sold out by September 2025: 58 brands—18 of which were debutants—with 66 ads.

Mr. President

For something this big, you simply have to be present as a spotlight-seeking president. Trump was there last year, but not last Sunday. He said he’s skipping this year—and that he can’t stand the artists performing in the halftime show. “I’m against them. I think it’s a terrible choice. It just sows hatred” <do you see the irony?>. He posted on social media that the big star, Bad Bunny, “is absolutely awful, one of the worst EVER! … No one understands a word this man is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children watching from the US and the rest of the world.” But besides the fact that there are 636 million Spanish speakers worldwide, approximately 65.5 million people in the US speak Spanish. This makes the US—after Mexico—the country with the most Spanish speakers in the world, even surpassing Spain. So, that ‘no one’ understands the Bunny, well… There have been more misconceptions coming from the White House.

But yes, the White House’s Spanish website was taken down immediately after Trump was sworn in for his second term. He also had the Spanish version taken down right away during his first term in 2017. A striking detail: shortly after the removal, visitors to the Spanish page received a 404 error message with a “Go Home” button. This button led not to a homepage, but to a video of Trump’s first term and his campaign. This was later changed to a simple link to the English homepage.

Angry!

Conservatives reacted strongly to choice for the Puerto Rican artist to headline the sports event. Some even refused to watch, wrongly labeling the singer a “foreigner.” Bad Bunny was born in Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States.

As if the fact that he has multiple Grammys to his name and has been the most-streamed artist on Spotify since 2022 (with over 19.8 billion streams last year alone) wasn’t enough, Bad Bunny broke another record: his Super Bowl Halftime Show became the most-watched ever with 136 million viewers—10 million more than the game itself. No small feat, especially considering that artists like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Beyoncé also performed previously. The NFL reported that clips from the show were viewed a staggering 4 billion times on social media in the first 24 hours. More than half of those views came from outside the United States.

His promise to make the show as queer as possible was kept, along with Lady Gaga (an even bigger rainbow ally, if possible), Ricky Martin (a gay Puerto Rican), and many others.

He sang every word in Spanish. The Guardian headlined: “Spanish is clearly now the world’s coolest language. So why do we push children to learn French?” So there’s that.

Alternative

The American organization Turning Point, once run by the murdered professional hater Charlie Kirk, was so offended by all this woke content that they organized an alternative halftime show. Headlined by Kid Rock, a redneck who rose to fame in the late 1990s and has been in the news more often in recent years for his outspoken conservative political leanings (he’s a fanatical Trump supporter) than for his music. He was the one who, during the Bud Light drama, very boldly—and in true American style—emptied a machine gun into a stack of that brand of beer cans.

Six million viewers watched a man who once wrote a song about his preference for underage girls perform as the “family-friendly” alternative to a Puerto Rican artist singing about love. They called it the “All-American Halftime Show,” as if singing in English were sufficient.

Kaching

The total advertising revenue is estimated at an astronomical sum between $650 and $700 million. The vast majority goes directly to the television network airing the game, which this year was NBCUniversal. This is their “reward” for the billions they paid the NFL upfront for exclusive broadcasting rights.

The NFL receives none of the advertising revenue on the day itself. Their revenue comes from long-term contracts with the broadcasters, who pay the NFL approximately $12 billion per year to broadcast the games. This money is divided equally among all 32 teams. This season, each team received approximately $430 million, regardless of whether they reached the finals or not.

The “Legendary February” Strategy

NBC employed a clever trick this year. Because they also broadcast the Winter Olympics (February 6-22) and NBA All-Star Weekend (February 15), they sold packages. Advertisers often had to buy space during the Olympics to secure a coveted spot at the Super Bowl. They thus purchased a campaign that runs throughout the month. This made NBCUniversal the big winner.

The “Legendary February” strategy was conceived by Jenny Storms, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of NBCUniversal Entertainment and Sports. The strategy arose from a unique combination of circumstances:

• NBC is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. They wanted to go big by demonstrating that they were the only network capable of carrying three such massive events simultaneously.

• The “Symphony” strategy, in which all parts of the company (from the theme parks to the news channels and streaming service Peacock) collaborate to promote a single event.

• The “Paris Method”: After the enormous success of the marketing for the 2024 Paris Olympics, NBC decided to no longer market sporting events as individual games, but as one giant “pop culture event.”

The Bunny

It may sound bizarre for a global star of his stature, but Bad Bunny received $0 in salary for his performance. The NFL never pays the performers a fee for the performance itself. They assume the global exposure is prohibitively expensive. The NFL and sponsor Apple Music do cover all the show’s costs. For Bad Bunny, this was a mega-budget estimated at $10 to $20 million, including the 10,000 fireworks and the enormous dance troupes. The only direct payment he received was a mandatory minimum, as stipulated by the rules of the American artists’ union: approximately $1,000 per day for rehearsals and the day of the performance.

For Bad Bunny, this is the ultimate advertisement. In the first 24 hours after the show, he saw searches for his upcoming tour increase by 1,500%. His real profit comes from sales of concert tickets, merchandise, and a huge spike in his streaming numbers on platforms like Spotify.

Bunny got 15 minutes of undivided attention, entirely facilitated by a production budget he didn’t have to pay himself. Converted, that airtime would have cost him over $200 million if he had had to buy it as advertising. It’s essentially the most expensive “free” promotional video in the world.

Record sales, joy & laughter, bitter criticism, but above all, a lot of rainbows (even in the NBC logo). Oh, and sports.