© Stephanie Amador / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK
The NFL apparently doesn’t care about the Internet backlash over Bad Bunny.
For the past few months, outraged fans have voiced their displeasure over the Puerto Rican superstar being named the Super Bowl halftime performer because he has no English-language songs.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has publicly defended Bad Bunny’s selection as the Super Bowl halftime show and has refused to back down amid calls to remove Bad Bunny from performing.
“It’s carefully thought through. I’m not sure we’ve ever selected an artist where we didn’t have some blowback or criticism. It’s pretty hard to do when you have literally hundreds of millions of people that are watching.
“We’re confident it’s going to be a great show. He understands the platform that he’s on, and I think it’s going to be exciting and a united moment. He’s one of the leading and most popular entertainers in the world. That’s what we try to achieve”
“It’s an important stage for us. It’s an important element to the entertainment value.”
Two weeks before the Super Bowl, ESPN’s Kalyn Kahler spoke to several NFL execs about the Bad Bunny situation.
According to Kahler, the NFL isn’t worried about the backlash they’ve received over Bad Bunny because they are trying to reach the Latino audience.
Via ESPN
“And then I think everybody was just kind of like, ‘OK, we’re going to get on board, because the goal is global reach,'” the executive said. “And this guy has a massive global reach.”
More specifically, the league has been focused on growing its Latino audience, inside the U.S. and in Latin America. Marissa Solis, the NFL’s senior vice president of global brand and consumer marketing, told ESPN in November that the league first identified the U.S. Latino population as a “critical growth area” several years ago.
“It is a community of more than 70 million people here in the U.S. … so it was very important for us to ensure that we were relevant,” Solis said.
We’ll have to wait and see how vocal fans are about Bad Bunny’s performance after the Super Bowl.