Jay-Z’s Halftime Reinvention

PRESENTED BY ELF LABS

Happy Friday, Future Party. How many of you are watching the Super Bowl this weekend to actually watch football? While that’s likely many of you, plenty are watching for the commercials, the halftime show, or just to have some great snacks with their friends. We wish Nielsen could figure out those ratings to give us a better glimpse of how the Super Bowl is consistently the most-watched broadcast event on TV.

We have a lot more on the Super Bowl below!

Jay-Z’s Roc Nation has spent the past five years reviving the Super Bowl halftime show into a showcase for music superstars, lifting the ratings and approval of the NFL overall.

The Big Picture: With Kendrick Lamar’s performance this Sunday — the first rapper to ever solo-headline the show — it may score the perfect mix of hip hop, cultural power, and blockbuster artistry that it’s been training for.

Behind the Scenes: As Roc Nation delivers the most anticipated Super Bowl halftime show in recent memory, Bloomberg wonders if its relationship with the NFL may soon be retired.

Encore: The NFL has majorly increased its favorability rating since the lows of 2017, partly due to Roc Nation’s involvement in delivering great artists and helping the league navigate cultural shifts. Considering the current shifts happening in culture and Lamar’s penchant for delivering topical performances, his show — with or without the inclusion of “Not Like Us” — will likely be the biggest talking point of the month.

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The NFL and YouTube are expanding their collaboration on the celebrity-driven flag football game that precedes the Super Bowl, with this year’s game featuring talent — not necessarily the football kind — like IShowSpeed, Kai Cenat, Quavo, and Teyana Taylor.

Why It Hits: Like its ongoing relationship with Roc Nation, the NFL wants to make sure it wins over the hearts and minds of young viewers, especially as most of them enter their adult years without their parents’ cable subscription. By aligning with YouTube (and the creator economy at large), the NFL gets the cultural influence that drives online conversation.

Behind the Plays: The roster for the Creator Flag Football Game in New Orleans ensures that the NFL will be trending all weekend.

Final Play: The NFL and YouTube have been hosting a flag football game since 2022, with last year’s reaching 100 million views across platforms — the first year that YouTube became the exclusive retailer of Sunday Ticket (for which Google pays about $2 billion a year). With TikTok on shaky ground in the US, YouTube wants to solidify its place as the creator-centric sponsor of all things football.

And with flag football joining the Summer Olympics in 2028, the game may also be a great cultural primer for the sport itself.

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73.8% of you voted Yes in yesterday’s poll: Do you think cancel culture has gone too far?

“Absolutely. Cancel culture — in a society that professes to honor free speech and liberty and justice for all — creates a cognitive dissonance that I find impossible to resolve.”

“I am all for holding public figures accountable, but no one has the right to ‘cancel’ another human being.”

“Long-ago past transgressions should not be held to current standards. Things were different then — right or wrong. People should not be judged, period, but especially not for socially accepted norms at the time. Repeated behavior during current social norms is a different matter altogether and should be viewed harshly.”

“Pretty much everybody who’s been ‘canceled’ either wound up regaining their privileged platform or never lost it in the first place.”

“Nobody is ever really cancelled. Sure, the spotlight on one’s actions, behavior, or words might not be good for business in the moment, but time has a way of changing perceptions, and life goes on.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

⛔ There’s a bipartisan push to make sure DeepSeek is kept off government devices.

🤖 Mistral — the OpenAI of Europe — launched its first iOS and Android app.

🚗 Lyft partnered with Anthropic on an AI-powered assistant that’s reduced the time it takes to resolve a customer service question by 87%.

🏄 Liberated Brands has filed for bankruptcy, which will close the stores of several surf-skate retailers like Quicksilver, Volcom, and Roxy.

👕 Gucci has politely shown creative director Sabato de Sarno the door after just two years.

💍 MSCHF is releasing a rock candy that has a real diamond in the middle. Lol.

📱 Snap’s embrace of creators amid TikTok’s woes led to an increase in both revenue and daily active users.

🖼️ Bluesky is getting its own Instagram competitor with “Flashes.”

🐓 Rooster Teeth is back after co-founder Burnie Burns acquired the shuttered company from Warner Bros. Discovery.