Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show drew more than 2,300 FCC complaints. 61 came from Colorado
May 19, 2026, 6:18 AM
124 million people watched the Super Bowl halftime show this past February. Some liked it, some didn’t, but 2,300 were so upset with it that they actually contacted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)!
Of the more than 2,300 complaints the FCC received, 61 came from Colorado, according to FCC records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The majority of the Colorado complaints focused on Bad Bunny’s performance, with grievances ranging from the set being performed almost entirely in Spanish to what viewers described as provocative dancing and inappropriate song lyrics.
“Bad-Bunny’s performance was performed entirely in Spanish; in the United States English is the spoken language not Spanish,” one Aurora viewer wrote in their complaint. A viewer from Arvada called the show “vulgar and demonic,” arguing that if the songs had been in English, the FCC would have already fined Bad Bunny and the NFL. Some complaints included overtly racist language, including one from Penrose that read: “After thousands of years of civilization, we seem to be publicly regressing to behavior that is even below that of many animal species.”
Texas led the nation with 226 complaints, according to FOX 4 in Dallas. Nationally, the complaints focused on similar themes: the use of Spanish, sexually suggestive choreography, and roughly 30 complaints that specifically objected to two men dancing together during the performance.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez reviewed transcripts of the performance and found no violation of the agency’s broadcast rules. “I found no violation of our rules and no justification for harassing broadcasters,” Gomez told Reuters. The Los Angeles Times reported that Bad Bunny’s lyrics had been “appropriately altered for the broadcast.”
For context, the 2,300-plus complaints represent a significant spike compared to recent halftime shows. Kendrick Lamar’s performance at Super Bowl LIX in 2025 drew 125 complaints. Rihanna’s 2023 halftime show generated 102. But both figures pale next to the all-time record — the 2004 Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake “wardrobe malfunction” generated more than 540,000 complaints.
