Several Nashville bars on Lower Broadway are planning to skip Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday.
Steve Smith owns a handful of bars in the city’s entertainment district, and The Tennessean reports none of them will air the halftime performance. That includes Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk & Steakhouse, along with Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, Honky Tonk Central, Rippy’s Honky Tonk, and The Diner.
John Rich’s Redneck Riviera is taking the same approach. The bar is hosting a Super Bowl watch party on its second floor and plans to change the channel at halftime, a bouncer confirmed to The Tennessean on Friday.
Not all Nashville bars are joining in. Friends in Low Places — co-owned by Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, and Strategic Hospitality — will stick with NBC’s broadcast from start to finish. A representative told The Tennessean that the bar is airing the entire Super Bowl as scheduled, including Bad Bunny.
Bad Bunny’s selection as the first primarily Spanish-language solo artist to headline the Super Bowl halftime show has been controversial since the NFL announced it last September. President Donald Trump called the decision “absolutely ridiculous” and declared himself “anti-them,” while Speaker of the House Mike Johnson suggested Lee Greenwood as an alternative performer.
Turning Point USA announced its “All-American Halftime Show” in response, billing it as “an opportunity for all Americans to enjoy a halftime show with no agenda other than to celebrate faith, family, and freedom,” according to the organization’s website. The show, which features Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett, will stream on YouTube, X, and Rumble, and air on conservative networks including Trinity Broadcasting Network, One America News Network, and Daily Wire+.
Bad Bunny is one of the most commercially dominant artists of the streaming era — Spotify’s most-streamed global artist four times. Still, some conservatives have questioned in bad faith whether the Puerto Rican artist is even American, despite Puerto Ricans being U.S. citizens since Woodrow Wilson was in office.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell defended the selection at a Feb. 2 press conference, calling Bad Bunny “one of the greatest artists in the world.” The league has identified growing its Latino fanbase as essential to its expansion strategy. In 2024, NFL Senior Vice President Marissa Solis stated that league growth “is mathematically impossible without Latinos,” citing nearly 40 million Latino fans in the United States.
Bad Bunny has declined to hold concerts in the continental United States out of concern that ICE raids could target his predominantly Latino audience. He addressed the backlash during his Saturday Night Live appearance, jokingly telling critics they had “four months to learn” Spanish.
Kid Rock, whose legal name is Robert James Ritchie, has faced his own controversy ahead of the Turning Point USA show. Lyrics from his 2001 song “Cool, Daddy Cool” resurfaced on social media this week, including lines like “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage see / Some say that’s statutory, but I say it’s mandatory.”
Regardless of which version Nashville bars choose to air, both halftime shows are expected to begin around 8 p.m. ET.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.