The NFL’s public relations team came under fire after viral social media graphics claimed that Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show drew 135 million viewers, making it the most-watched in history. Those numbers were quickly shown to be inaccurate.
Official Nielsen data, released on February 10, 2026, painted a different picture. The full game on February 8 averaged 124.9 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, and NFL+ platforms.
This made it the second-most-watched Super Bowl ever, trailing only the 127.7 million from the previous year. Bad Bunny’s 13-minute performance, broadcast from 8:15 to 8:30 p.m. ET, averaged 128.2 million viewers. This performance was strong, but it ranked fourth on the all-time viewership list.
Bad Bunny’s show was behind Kendrick Lamar, who had 133.5 million viewers in 2025, Michael Jackson with 133.4 million in 1993 and Usher reached 129.3 million in 2024.
At its peak, viewership reached 137.8 million during the second quarter of the event, but dropped significantly during the halftime show.
Samba TV, a company that monitors what people watch on smart TVs in millions of U.S. homes, provided some interesting insights into audience behavior. Their data revealed that Bad Bunny’s performance reached 26.5 million households, a significant 39% decrease from the previous year’s viewership for Kendrick Lamar’s show.
They also found that viewers started changing the channel almost immediately after the performance began, with the number of households watching dropping to about 88% of the total who had tuned in during the peak of the game.
Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show’s real-time numbers and cultural divide
Many critics pointed to these figures as clear evidence of rejection. President Donald Trump described the performance as “absolutely terrible, one of the worst ever” and called it “an affront to the Greatness of America.”
Others, like right-wing critic Benny Johnson, argued that the all-Spanish set, filled with Puerto Rican cultural symbols and unity messages, felt disconnected for parts of the core audience.
You are being lied to by the desperate NFL PR machines.
That viral graphic claiming 135M watched Bad Bunny’s halftime flop? Total BS.
Even Nielsen data proves it wasn’t close to being “the most-watched ever.”
Samba smart TV data shows the REAL story: massive audience drop-off… pic.twitter.com/VG6hFY88zp
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 11, 2026
At the same time, Turning Point USA’s competing “All-American Halftime Show” gained attention. Featuring Kid Rock and other artists, it peaked at 6.1 million concurrent viewers on YouTube and reached 19-21 million total views in the days following the event.
Supporters framed this as a strong alternative, describing it as a triumph of “Christ-centered culture” over what they called “degeneracy.”
Even though there was a decrease in TV viewers, clips from Bad Bunny’s performance gathered over 4 billion views on social media within just one day, showing that many people were still interested online.
The difference between overall TV ratings, real-time drop-offs, and the popularity of competing shows has led to more conversations about what viewers really want at the NFL’s biggest event of the year.
Some think these findings could inspire future halftime shows to be more appealing to a wider audience and to avoid factors that lead to changes in viewership.
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