The Super Bowl halftime show is the mini-concert staged in the interval of American football’s championship game, now one of the most watched musical performances anywhere, regularly drawing more than 100 million viewers in the United States alone.
It began modestly. At the first Super Bowl in 1967 the entertainment came from the marching bands of the University of Arizona and Grambling State, with pigeons, thousands of balloons and two men wearing jetpacks. The pop era truly arrived in 1993, when Michael Jackson headlined at the Rose Bowl, and the NFL’s head of music has said that his performance changed how major stars viewed the slot. The oddest rule concerns pay: headliners receive no fee beyond union scale, reportedly around 1,000 dollars a day, while the league covers production and travel. The cheque is tiny; the audience is anything but.