By the Numbers: How the All-American Halftime Show Set Viewership Records

Turning Point USA staged an “All-American” alternative halftime show during Super Bowl LX, positioning it as a conservative counterprogram to the official NFL halftime show headlined by Bad Bunny. He is known for appearing in drag wearing prosthetic breasts, and his performance featured obscene lyrics in Spanish alongside multiple Latin American flags.

The All-American show, by contrast, was an hour-long event organized in honor of TPUSA co-founder Charlie Kirk and featured gospel and patriotic music, speeches, and tributes. It was endorsed by the U.S. Department of War, promoted by conservative media, and cross-aired by allied outlets.

Conservative media described the event as a major success, while mainstream outlets largely dismissed it as a failure. A closer look at the numbers, however, shows that the All-American halftime show ranks among the most successful alternative broadcasts in Super Bowl history.

Like the success of Angel Studios and the many faith-based films that have delivered strong returns on investment, the event suggests a substantial audience appetite for faith, patriotism, and traditional values. The digital media environment is increasingly making it possible for David to compete with Goliath.

The official Super Bowl halftime show drew a record-breaking 135.4 million live viewers on NBC and Peacock. At the same time, Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show,”  achieved a peak of 6 million concurrent live viewers on YouTube, with an additional 3 million on Rumble and roughly 1 million across other platforms including X, TBN, and OAN, for more than 10 million live viewers total.

By the end of Sunday night, the TPUSA broadcast had surpassed 20 million total views, and by the following morning it reached approximately 24 million views on YouTube alone, with an estimated total of 40 million-plus views when all major platforms are included.

This performance solidified TPUSA’s broadcast as the third-highest-ranked competing event in Super Bowl history, behind only the 1992 In Living Color special and 2002’s Fear Factor. While the Super Bowl continues to command the largest live television audience, the TPUSA show demonstrated unique digital longevity. In contrast, official halftime performances tend to generate replay traffic through fragmented individual song clips rather than full-event replays, making TPUSA’s single 25-minute broadcast the most successful on-demand alternative Super Bowl event to date.

Among many criticisms, conservatives objected to the fact that Bad Bunny’s show did not reflect American values. The Super Bowl is one of the most American institutions that exists. While baseball is the official American pastime, American football is played at any significant level only in the United States and, in fact, bears our name: American football. Americans even call soccer “soccer” so it will not be confused with this most American of games.

Past Super Bowl shows have featured military performances. Historically, the NFL used the halftime window for “Salute to Service” moments and patriotic spectacles.

While a military flyover happens at every Super Bowl during the National Anthem, the Blue Angels specifically performed a rare flyover during the pre-game opening of Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara in 2016. Super Bowl LX in 2026 featured a historic joint Navy and Air Force flyover, including B-1 bombers and F-35s, to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary. Like most modern flyovers, it occurred during the Anthem, whereas in the 1970s and 1980s these displays were sometimes integrated into broader halftime festivities.

Before the 1990s, the NFL rarely hired pop stars and instead focused on explicitly “All-American” themes. Super Bowl IV in 1970 featured a massive military reenactment of the Battle of New Orleans, complete with cannons, muskets, and smoke that nearly delayed the second-half kickoff. Super Bowl XI in 1977, titled “It’s a Small World,” was a patriotic tribute produced by Disney that relied heavily on traditional Americana.

During the Gulf War, Super Bowl XXV in 1991, headlined by New Kids on the Block, was framed as a “Small World Salute to 25 Years of Super Bowls” and placed heavy emphasis on a tribute to U.S. troops. It featured a massive choir of children from military families and was preceded by Whitney Houston’s National Anthem.

Following the September 11 attacks, Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 featured U2 in an explicitly patriotic tribute. Although U2 is an Irish band, the performance centered on a scrolling list of names of those killed in the attacks, and singer Bono ended the set by revealing an American flag sewn into the lining of his jacket.

Liberals are calling conservatives racist for objecting to Bad Bunny performing exclusively in Spanish. The objection is not about race, but about patriotism and the fact that most Americans do not speak Spanish and therefore are not represented by Spanish-language songs. In the past, Latin artists such as Gloria Estefan, Enrique Iglesias, Christina Aguilera, Shakira, and Jennifer Lopez typically sang in English or Spanglish, a mix of English and Spanish.

Super Bowl viewers sparked a backlash after English translations of the Spanish lyrics sung by Bad Bunny circulated following his halftime performance. Translations of his songs, particularly “Safaera,” include graphic references to sexual acts, drug use, and profanity. They rank among the most obscene lyrics ever associated with a Super Bowl halftime show. Christians objected to claims that they should have embraced the performance or that children would enjoy it simply because the lyrics were in Spanish.

Ironically, the same media outlets and social media platforms claiming that obscenity is only a Christian opinion, and not a concrete fact, prohibit users from posting English translations of the lyrics because they violate obscenity rules.

Mainstream media coverage of the All-American halftime show has revealed clear bias against Christianity and patriotism. Wired described Bad Bunny’s performance as “electrifying,” while dismissing the Turning Point USA show as dull and taking place before “a crowd of what appeared to be fewer than 200 people in an undisclosed location.” No one who attended or signed up for the event has described it as dull. The takeaway is that, to mainstream media, Christianity and patriotism are considered dull by default.

On the same page, Wired ran a headline reading, “What to Do if ICE Invades Your Neighborhood.” Federal law enforcement, by definition, cannot “invade” the United States. This kind of one-sided framing fuels violent protests and attacks on ICE agents, which then turn violent and are subsequently used to support the liberal narrative that ICE itself is violent and that deportations should stop.

The post By the Numbers: How the All-American Halftime Show Set Viewership Records appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.