On Sunday night, Rihanna became the first artist to perform at the Super Bowl while pregnant. The nine-time Grammy award winner hit the stage in a head-to-toe red jumpsuit, showing a small baby bump below a glossy bandeau.
The 34-year-old billionaire indeed gave a fantastic performance at the Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show but she is not going to get paid for it. And it’s not because she is wealthy. Other celebrities who have come before her at the Super Bowl including Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Shakira, Justin Timberlake, and Bruno Mars also did not take home a paycheck for their performances. And this is because no one gets paid for performing at the Super Bowl halftime show.
Being one of the biggest stages in the world, the benefits artists get from exposure to fans at the show is more than a paycheck. In 2020 when Jennifer Lopez and Shakira performed, the former gained over 2 million new followers across social media. The two singers also saw 267% and 187% streaming gains days after their performance, Billboard said.
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Last year when Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, 50 Cent and Kendrick Lamar performed at the Super Bowl halftime show, they also saw a major boost to their catalogs. There was a 183% increase in album sales for Dr. Dre a week after the show. Blige’s album sales also rose 999%.
Rihanna’s performance on Sunday in front of more than 100 million viewers was an opportunity for her to get back into her music career again after being missing from the stage for nearly seven years. During her absence, she grew her beauty brands Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty and welcomed her first child with A$AP Rocky. She also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for her single “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
“It’s going to be a celebration of my catalog,” Rihanna said of her halftime show performance during a press conference last week. Halftime shows can cost more than $10 million to produce. The NFL and Apple Music are expected to pay for Rihanna’s performance, an NFL spokesperson told Forbes. It is however not known if the singer put some of her own money into the production.
