Jennifer Lopez and Shakira brought some sizzling Latin heat to the stage during the Super Bowl
LIV Halftime Show.
It was amazing.
Incredible.
And… free?
Yes, according to Forbes, the only money the two superstar performers received was, quote,
"union scale and coverage of production costs."
So were J.Lo and Shakira ripped off by the NFL?
Apparently not!
According to Forbes, this is surprisingly a normal deal for A-list stars who perform
at the Super Bowl.
Both Bruno Mars and Beyonce herself agreed to the same terms in recent years.
So even though Lopez grosses an average of $2.2 million per tour stop, and Shakira pulls
in $1.6 million, it's actually totally normal for neither of them to get paid for the biggest,
most high profile live performance of the year.
So why do they agree to do it?
Well, the big gig will likely make them some major cheddar in other ways.
If we look at what happened to past acts following their halftime shows, it's clear that the
unpaid opportunity can be worth millions of dollars.
One industry expert explained to Forbes that the Super Bowl is
"the single biggest promotional vehicle for a music star on the planet."
And Forbes had the stats to back it up.
Justin Timberlake, who appeared in the 2018 halftime show, experienced a 214% rise in
Spotify streams in the hour following his performance, so clearly those people weren't
actually watching the game.
And in 2017, Lady Gaga's album surged 60 spots in a week, all the way up to number two on
the Billboard charts following her Super Bowl performance.
Even Maroon 5, whose 2019 performance at Super Bowl LIII was widely panned, experienced a
Super Bowl bump, earning an average of $200,000 more per tour stop.
And the list goes on, with everyone from Travis Scott to Katy Perry citing their Super Bowl
performances as major financial bonanzas.
In fact, stars benefit so much from appearing at the Super Bowl that prior to Perry's infamous
2015 performance, which launched a thousand memes thanks to the legendary Left Shark,
rumors began swirling that the NFL may start having performers pay them for the right to
perform at the big game!
That hasn't happened yet, possibly in part because the production itself is so expensive.
Way back in 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that Super Bowl halftime shows can
cost upwards of $10 million, so figuring out who is going to eat that kind of bill is surely
a major sticking point.
And Perry, at least, said she wouldn't have paid if she had been asked to, because the
honor of playing at the game is a bigger deal than anything else.
She told Forbes,
"I don't want an asterisk by my name for playing the Super Bowl for the rest of my life.
I want to be able to say I played the Super Bowl based on my talents and my merit, thank
you very much."
Either way, performing at the Super Bowl LIV free of charge definitely didn't put a drain
on Shakira or Jennifer Lopez's wallets.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Shakira boasts a $300 million fortune and J.Lo has
about $400 million to her name, so yah, these two aren't exactly starving artists.
But they did invest a lot of sweat equity into their performance.
Shakira told the Associated Press,
"The scope of this show is so grand, not just the actual size of the stage but also the
size of the audience.
I have prepared for months.
I've trained physically and vocally harder than I ever have before.
I don't take this opportunity for granted.
Not only do I want people to have the time of their lives, I want young Latin girls around
the world to know this isn't an accident and this is something they too can achieve.
Jennifer and I talked about that a lot.
Symbolically this means so much to us."
You certainly can't put a price on that.
Way to go, ladies.
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