Before the Super Bowl, comedianAdam Carolla comparedthe NFL’s decision to book Bad Bunny for the halftime show to Bud Light partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in 2023.
"You know, Bud Light thought they had their fans and they weren’t going anywhere, and Cracker Barrel thought they had their fans and they weren’t going anywhere," Carolla said. "I think it’s happened a time or two where companies and entities figured they had their fans locked in, let’s go with other fans."
For context, Bud Light sparked significant backlash from beer drinkers by partnering with Mulvaney to celebrate his "365 days of girlhood." Consequently, the company lost an estimated $27 billion in market value and lost its position as the world’s top-selling beer brand for the first time in two decades.
While no one expects the NFL to face that level of fallout, Bad Bunny lost the most viewership from the second quarter to the halftime performance in Super Bowl history on Sunday.
Specifically, halftime viewership fell 7 percent from the game’s peak audience of 137.9 million in the second quarter. Most years, the audience grows during halftime.
It is unclear how much Turning Point USA’s alternative halftime show featuring Kid Rock affected Super Bowl viewership. However, the stream drew nearly six million concurrent viewers across social media platforms, suggesting the impact was not insignificant.
The question is what type of lasting effect the negativity surrounding the Super Bowl will have on the NFL in the long term. Keep in mind, the official 2.2 percent decline from last year's game is misleading.
Before the season began, Nielsen introduced an updated measurement system called Big Data + Panel, which combines digital device data with its traditional meter panel. The change produced noticeable increases in reported average viewership, particularly for live sports. Conservatively, the new methodology is estimated to have boosted live sports audiences by 5 to 8 percent.
Translation: the Super Bowl was downmuchmore than the NFL and NBC claim. Likewise, the regular season was not actually up 10% year over year.
Assuming Nielsen won't tinker with its method again by the start of next season, the league could see the consequences of ignoring the interests of half the country.
Source: The Latest & Most Breaking News With OutKick
