How Bad Bunny went from Super Bowl supporting act to headliner with ticket sales to rival Taylor Swift

Bad Bunny’s momentum is reaching a fever pitch. Fresh off a historic night at the Grammys, the trailblazing Puerto Rican rapper, singer, and songwriter is now set to take America’s biggest stage at the Super Bowl, solidifying a decade-long ascent that has redefined the American music industry.

In just ten years, Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, transformed from a SoundCloud rapper to a six-time Grammy winner, becoming the first Latin and Spanish-speaking artist to win album of the year. On his road to the Super Bowl, the artist has made a record-breaking impact on the U.S. economy.

Since 2018, the artist has embarked on six concert tours. His latest tour, No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí—“I don’t want to leave here” in English—hosted at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in San Juan (known locally as “El Choli”), generated an estimated $400 million from 31 concerts, according to Wells Fargo. Beyond ticket sales, the 600,000 attendees the residency brought in generated an estimated $733 million for Puerto Rico, according to the Associated Press. The artist’s previous concerts also netted high sums. His World’s Hottest Tour became the highest-grossing tour in a calendar year, bringing in more than $435 million across 81 shows and 1.9 million ticket sales (although Taylor Swift shattered that record the following year by nearly $600 million).

Bad Bunny has also repeatedly topped Spotify’s charts as the most-streamed artist globally, most recently winning the title in 2025 with nearly 20 billion streams.

This will not be the singer’s first appearance at the Super Bowl. In 2020, the Puerto Rican native performed with Shakira and Jennifer Lopez. But since then, the artist has transformed himself from a featuring artist into an international phenomenon reportedly worth $100 million. 

From SoundCloud to the Super Bowl

Born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, a municipality in the outskirts of San Juan, Bad Bunny was raised in a lower-middle class household. His father was a truck driver and his mother was an English teacher. The singer worked at a grocery store during college. In his off time, he uploaded songs he made on his own to SoundCloud, the world’s biggest audio platform. In 2016, his song “Dile” earned more than one million streams. The then 22-year-old singer soon had producers blowing up his phone.

Bad Bunny’s path from SoundCloud artist to a global platform was accelerated by strategic collaborations and a cultural setting ripe for Latino artists. The artist broke through to a mainstream American audience via collaborations with artists like Cardi B and Drake. Those partnerships were a trade off for both Bad Bunny and the American artists, according to cultural historian Jared Bahir Browsh.

“They’re internationalizing their fan base while he’s gaining a footing in English-speaking countries through those collaborations,” Browsh told Fortune. 

Leveraging international stardom for market expansion

The decision to have Bad Bunny perform at this year’s halftime show was a calculated move by the NFL and Roc Nation—Jay-Z’s entertainment company that has overseen the halftime show since 2019—to capitalize on the artist’s international appeal. International audiences compose a large share of the NFL’s viewership. In a conversation with ESPN last November, Marissa Solis, the NFL’s senior vice president of global brand and consumer marketing, said the U.S. Latino population was a “critical growth area.”

Browsh refutes the idea the NFL chose Bad Bunny as a political stunt. The artist sparked controversy last year for refusing to tour in the U.S. because of ICE concerns, causing outrage among critics and inspiring the creation of a spinoff halftime show hosted by Turning Point USA, the conservative nonprofit founded by Charlie Kirk. Instead, Browsh said the NFL and Roc Nation’s choosing Bad Bunny was purely a business decision.

“He’s coming off a huge tour and he’s coming off being the top artist in terms of streaming and record sales last year,” Browsh said.

Latinos both at home and abroad are the NFL’s fastest-growing fanbase. And about one-third of the NFL’s fans are from outside of the U.S., according to Nielsen. The NFL is leaning into their fanbase’s shifting demographic, launching a global partnerships program in 2022 to expand its international reach.

“It’s a business and so there’s always a tradeoff,” Browsh said of Bad Bunny’s halftime performance. “He gets the visibility of the largest sporting event in the U.S. and they get access to those new markets.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com