Is the Superbowl America’s Biggest Pop Culture Party?

By Amy Lam

If you placed a gun to my head 30 seconds before my research for this article, and asked me what ‘NFL’ stood for, I sadly wouldn’t be here to write it. If you then took pity on me (in this admittedly outlandish scenario) and asked me to name an American football player, I would only let you down again. And in all honesty, if you mentioned the extremely unambiguous term of ‘American football’ to me, I would think of the homonymous Midwest emo band, rather than the sport.

But say you asked me, exasperated now, if I’d heard of the Superbowl - I think we’d finally be on the same page. See, for a certain non-sporty, non-American lover of both music and popular culture, this event has only ever been about the half-time show. And what a tradition of shows it’s been; particularly since Gen-Z came into consciousness. While the inception of the Superbowl half-time show in 1967 featured lacklustre college marching bands, the sheer popularity of the event led to the show taking on larger and larger proportions. Michael Jackson’s performance in 1993 marked the evolution of the half-time show from toilet break to huge, full-blown, pop-culture music supernova. There could be no mistake in it. The people yearn for the spectacle of celebrity, even at the biggest football event of the season.

Michael Jackson at his 1993 Superbowl performance, Getty Images

A rather crude (but effective) fact to support this: during Bad Bunny’s 2026 Superbowl set, the New York Department of Environmental Protection reported a ”significant reduction in water usage” across all five boroughs. In the 15 minutes after, water usage spiked up to an equivalent of 761,719 toilets flushing almost simultaneously. The cultured people of New York have spoken through their actions, preferring to take a bathroom break during the actual game, rather than to miss a second of the Puerto-Rican singer’s show. Call it data-based anthropology.

I mean no disrespect to the sport and its industry on the whole - mostly. Even with my extremely limited knowledge of it, the mildest consumption of American media will tell you that American football is deeply ingrained in the culture. It wields cultural, social and economic capital there.

But for a capitalist society, it can’t just be about the sport, as shown by the intense merchandising and gambling that forms part of the Superbowl. Similarly, then, it would be naive to claim that the half-time show is just about music: although extremely entertaining and usually a display of technical prowess, the draw usually comes from the big celebrity name performing. Even the greatest music snobs among us aren’t immune to the thrill of the event, the excitement of hearing the crowd roar, and the event organisers know this, of course.

What emerges then - at least from a bystander’s point of view - is less of a match than a Frankenstein-esque cultural conglomerate; with sport, music, advertising and endless promotion all fused into one. Having a short attention span, the consistent flaw my generation is accused of, ceases to be an issue here: performances are mashups of 30 second song excerpts, and artists move quicker than your brain can process. In other words, it is inevitable that these shows captivate.

Bad Bunny’s Superbowl performance, 2026, Getty Images

Although it would be easy to chalk this up to celebrity worship and good marketing, I’d like to believe that occasionally, this spectacle can produce something greater than just a profit margin for NBC or Channel 5. With over 130 million viewers of the SuperBowl this year, there is undoubtedly a sense of community fostered from this collective pop culture event. Millions of people worldwide flock to bars, pubs and watch parties to discuss both the game and the show, bringing a remarkable unity in such a divisive age. And despite an intense monetisation under an even intenser government, the half-time show, as proven by Bad Bunny, can also be a remarkable display of individual culture, and even political resistance.

Ultimately, the Superbowl is probably the only time a year the Venn diagram of a 40-year old American football fan’s interests has intersected with mine. I think this is noteworthy in of itself. Regardless of personal tastes, I believe the longevity and popularity of the event proves that there’s something to be gained by tuning in year after year. The show and the game may attract the crowd, but the sense of community fostered around the event gives it meaning.