Taylor Swift Reportedly Refused To Play The Super Bowl Halftime Show Because The NFL Wouldn’t Meet Her Demands

It’s not often you’ll hear me take Taylor Swift‘s side, but if this is true…the NFL screwed this one up big time.

After her recent appearance on the New Heights podcast alongside Travis and Jason Kelce, Swifties began speculating that the pop superstar was dropping easter eggs that she would be the performer for the halftime show of Super Bowl LX in February.

During one portion of the episode, Taylor Swift discusses her granny hobbies, sharing that she enjoys painting, cooking, sewing, and, most recently, taking up baking sourdough.

“I have a different baking obsession every six months. Right now, we’re very deep in a sourdough obsession that has taken up my life.”

What does that have to do with the Super Bowl halftime show? Well this year’s Super Bowl will be held at Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers…whose mascot is Sourdough Sam.

Swift is obviously the biggest artist in the world, and there’s no doubt that the NFL would love to be able to land her as the halftime performer, something NFL commissioner Roger Goodell admitted today during an appearance on The Today Show:

“We would always love to have Taylor play. She is a special, special talent. And obviously she would be welcome at any time.”

When pressed on whether there was anything in the works for this year’s halftime show, which is produced by Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation, Goodell wouldn’t confirm that they were in talks with Taylor – but he didn’t deny it either:

“I can’t tell you anything about that. It’s a maybe.”

But yesterday, the NFL announced that Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny would instead be the headliner of the halftime show for Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium.

So what happened to Taylor Swift?

Well, she reportedly was in fact in discussions to headline the show, which could end up featuring her fiancé Travis Kelce playing in the game if the Chiefs make a run to the Super Bowl. But according to gossip journalist Rob Shuter, Swift had what sounds like some pretty reasonable demands that the NFL refused to meet.

The NFL doesn’t pay Super Bowl halftime performers. The artists who headline the show instead do it for “exposure.” But Taylor Swift is the biggest artist in the world, and maybe the only artist who would bring exposure to the Super Bowl and not the other way around. So Taylor reportedly requested that she be able to retain ownership of her halftime performance – meaning that she, and not the NFL, would control how video and re-airings of the performance would be used. And she also wanted slots during the broadcast to promote her own projects, both conditions the NFL reportedly “flatly refused.”

Now, it seems like a no-brainer for the NFL to agree to pretty much whatever Taylor wants to headline. You want something that’s going to break records and draw headlines (and more importantly, eyeballs)? Seems like a small price to pay.

But the NFL is notoriously…well, for lack of a better word, hard-headed. And they refused to budge, resulting in Taylor to walk away from talks of performing the halftime show.

As one veteran insider reportedly put it:

“She doesn’t need the Super Bowl. But the Super Bowl absolutely needs her. Without Taylor, it’s just another halftime show.”

To put it in football terms, the NFL fumbled this one.The post Taylor Swift Reportedly Refused To Play The Super Bowl Halftime Show Because The NFL Wouldn’t Meet Her Demands first appeared on Whiskey Riff.