The NFL wants artists to pay to perform at the Super Bowl
There are three finalists for next year’s Super Bowl show at halftime: Katy Perry, Coldplay and Rihanna. According to the Wall Street Journal, the NFL has asked the artists if they’ll pay to play.
“I think it probably is worth it to be honest with you,” says Bill Werde, an entrepreneur at Guggenheim Digital Media, and former editor of Billboard Magazine.
“The only thing that comes close is arguably the Grammys, and that’s only if you have a Norah Jones kind of night – you perform, you do an amazing job, you win a bunch of Grammys and it’s just, kind of, your night. Then you’ll see the kind of sales spikes and lifts that are associated with a Super Bowl performance,” he says. “Even when you’re an established artist, the lift that you get from playing this halftime show is undeniable.”
After playing halftime, notes Werde, you can raise ticket prices, and get bigger and better brand sponsorships worth millions.
Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross, says even if this year’s finalists won’t pay up, the NFL could still ask other musicians to – after all, it has a monopoly on halftime.
“You can come up with a list pretty quickly, of other folks who might be willing to pay a little bit of money to have their act featured on a show that over 100 million people are watching,” he says.
But, points out Russell Scibetti, founding editor of industry blog The Business of Sports, maybe fans shouldn’t get to watch the NFL’s negotiations.
“The way that they went about it maybe wasn’t the best. They could have had those conversations privately with the artists,” says Scibetti about the NFL’s requests.
A different approach, says Scibetti, like the NFL asking artists to help promote it through charity work, would have been better received.
Notes Werde, musicians want their music in the spotlight – not their negotiations.
“I promise you that there are people in the head office of the NFL on a witch hunt right now, trying to figure out how this news got out there,” he says.
Had the negotiations taken place in complete secrecy, says Werde, “These artists would all be considering what it’s worth to them and what part of that value they should be willing to share with the NFL – out in the public it takes on a very different patina.”
Graphic by Shea Huffman/Marketplace
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