bad-bunny – Grateful Immigrant

You could’ve watched Bad Bunny. You could’ve watched TPUSA. You could’ve watched nothing. Doesn’t matter. Your remote, your rules.

I tuned out. Couldn’t follow Spanish. Didn’t feel entertained. Bruno Mars, two years in a row—now that was fun. This? Just people simulating sexual acts. Not my thing, not for kids. If it’s yours, fine. Free country.

But here’s the real story. TPUSA did their thing. Warehouse. Kid Rock. No bells, no whistles. I didn’t even watch. Yet—millions tuned in. Live concurrent peaked around 6 million on YouTube, total views climbing to 19–20+ million across platforms in the days after. Five, twenty, twenty-five—who knows exactly? Point is, it happened.

chicagotribune.com

Super Bowl halftime show: Bad Bunny nets 135M viewers to Kid Rock’s 6M – Chicago Tribune

And the NFL? They spent multi-millions. Expected millions to watch. Tradition. Name. Power. So they charged brands millions for thirty seconds. Bad Bunny’s halftime averaged 128 million viewers, with social media clips hitting billions—still massive, but not the runaway record some expected.

Now ask any suit who’s paid. What was the real cost? NFL—two hundred grand per thousand eyeballs (or way more in ad buys). TPUSA? Pennies. Maybe less. A fraction of the production budget, yet it pulled serious eyes from folks who wanted something else.

And next year? Those same suits won’t ask “how do we get on the elephant?” They’ll ask “how do we get in the warehouse?”

Because the numbers don’t lie. And the numbers just said—this country doesn’t want spectacle. It wants something solid.

That’s the wake-up.

Remember the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light gamble? Still in the hole! Years later—sales tanked 20-30%+ back in 2023, dropped them from #1 beer, and recovery’s been slow or stuck. Boycott hit hard, distributors felt it, market share never fully bounced back. One flashy “inclusive” move, and the backlash cost billions in lost revenue. Same vibe here: push the lecture, lose the room.