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NFL Wants Super Bowl Acts To Pay?
The National Football League doesn’t normally pay its Super Bowl halftime acts but next year it may strike a different deal, telling artists that the show will cost them some money, according to sources.
Photo: AP Photo / Evan Vucci
Super Bowl Halftime Show, MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, N.J.
The NFL has apparently narrowed its 2015 candidates down to three and, if the rumor is true, the red-hot genre of country music will not be on the gridiron at halftime.
Instead it would be one of three gritty, smashmouth, testosterone-inducing acts: Rihanna, Coldplay or Katy Perry. (Apparently, the popular online campaign to get “Weird Al” Yankovic to be the halftime act fell on deaf ears.)
Sources told the Wall Street Journal that when NFL officials told artist reps that their clients were under consideration for the Super Bowl, they added that the show would require financial compensation.
The pay-to-play suggestion got a “chilly reception,” sources told the WSJ. NFL spokeswoman Joanna Hunter told the paper that the league’s contracts with performers were confidential and that the only goal was “to put on the best possible show.”
As for the lineup, “when we have something to announce, we’ll announce it.”