Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Show Drew 2,000 FCC Complaints

Three months after Bad Bunny brought Puerto Rican culture to the biggest stage in American sports, the FCC has released the receipts — and they make for quite a read.

The Federal Communications Commission this week published more than 2,000 viewer complaints filed in the wake of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show, which aired February 11 on NBC. It’s the largest complaint volume the agency has seen in years — notably surpassing the response to the 2020 Super Bowl, which, in a fun bit of symmetry, also featured a Bad Bunny appearance. The Commission had to break the filings into five separate documents just to contain them.

The complaints, first flagged by TMZ and later analyzed by outlets including the Dallas Morning News, paint a portrait of a very specific kind of American viewer — one who watched the performance, felt deeply wronged by it, and then sat down to write a letter to the federal government about a football game.

What Exactly Were People Upset About?

The grievances fell into a few reliable categories. Many viewers objected to the Spanish-language lyrics in songs like “Safaera” and “Yo Perreo Sola,” with some admitting they didn’t speak Spanish but were nonetheless certain something unacceptable was being said. Others looked up translations afterward and were not pleased with what they found. Several complaints noted that if the same words had been sung in English, “there would have been even more uproar.”

Then there was the dancing. One viewer from Ohio wrote that the “NFL halftime show showed 2 men in act of intercourse while behind a pickup truck door.” A Las Vegas viewer declared it “the most disgusting inappropriate show” they’d ever seen, adding, “I had to make all of my children go into the next room!” A viewer from Republic, Missouri called it “the most disgusting, vulgar and repulsive thing I have ever seen on public tv.”

One complaint, perhaps the most dramatic of the bunch, went considerably further: “I was raised with God and religion. I had to go to counseling and therapy after the Super Bowl… I can’t get the lyrics out of my head. I have PTSD from the Super Bowl.”

Others accused the performer of speaking in a “demonic tongue” and called the show “anti-American.” One viewer claimed they were “forced to see a man’s penis and balls.” Another described “a prolonged scene depicting two male performers grinding their crotches together in a manner that was clearly sexual in nature.”

A Charlotte, North Carolina viewer who, to their credit, appeared to have actually done their homework, wrote specifically that they “take issue with the vocal performances of ‘Safaera,’ which is a track widely known for explicit sexual references and graphic lyrical content, and ‘Yo Perreo Sola,’ which had choreography featuring overtly sexualized movements, including widespread twerking, grinding, pelvic thrusts and other sexually suggestive conduct.”

Some complaints also appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence, following what analysts described as a stilted, templated structure. The words “vulgar” and “explicit” each appeared more than 600 times across the filings.

Texas Led the Nation in Complaints

A Dallas Morning News analysis found that Texas filed more complaints than any other state — more than 10% of the 2,157 total. Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio each contributed eight complaints, with Houston filing six and Dallas four. More than 40% of Texas complainants mentioned Bad Bunny by name, matching the national average. About 30% used the word “vulgar.”

“It was a disgrace and an embarrassment for US all,” wrote one person from Dallas. A Plano resident, filing under the subject line “Violent Horror Advertisement During Family Broadcast,” wrote: “While I do not speak Spanish, how in the world could anyone let Bad Bunny be broadcast, saying the things that he did, without it being censored?” One Texan who identified their city as “none of your business” noted they watched “at least the 5 seconds” before turning it off in offense.

What the FCC Actually Found

Here’s the thing: the FCC had already reviewed the performance back in February and found no violations. The agency determined that songs including “Tití Me Preguntó,” “Monaco,” and “Safaera” had all been edited for broadcast — references to sex acts and genitalia were removed before the show aired. The lyrics, as broadcast, did not run afoul of FCC rules prohibiting indecent material during primetime hours.

That conclusion did little to satisfy Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine, who had called for the investigation in the first place. “What Americans witnessed during the Super Bowl halftime show with Bad Bunny was despicable and never should be allowed to be shown on television again,” Fine told the New York Post.

President Trump also weighed in after the show aired, calling it “one of the worst EVER!” on social media. “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World,” he wrote. Many of the FCC complaints echoed that language closely.

The Other Side of the Story

Lost in the outrage is the fuller picture of what Bad Bunny’s halftime show actually represented. The New York Times called the performance “joyful.” Time magazine described it as “an act of resistance.” For many viewers — 128.2 million of them — it was a genuine cultural moment: the first time a Latin artist of Bad Bunny’s stature had headlined the Super Bowl halftime show, performing a 13-minute set at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara that leaned hard into Puerto Rican identity and pride.

The week before the game, Bad Bunny — born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio in Puerto Rico — won the Grammy for Album of the Year for Debí Tirar Más Fotos and used his speech to speak out against violent ICE raids, joining a wave of artists who addressed immigration enforcement at the ceremony. He had declined to perform in the continental U.S. during his touring cycle because of those same raids, instead staging a lengthy residency in Puerto Rico.

The pre-show backlash had been loud enough that Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA produced an alternate “All-American Halftime Show” featuring Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett, broadcasting it as a counter-programming option for viewers who didn’t want to watch Bad Bunny.

They were in the minority. For every viewer who wrote to the FCC, millions more watched — and for a lot of them, what they saw was something they hadn’t seen on that stage before.

For what it’s worth, past halftime headliners including Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna also generated FCC complaint waves after their performances. The tradition, at this point, is almost as reliable as the game itself.