How Much Are Super Bowl Halftime Show Performers Paid?
While Usher's Super Bowl 2024 halftime show undoubtedly presented the artist with the biggest audience of his career, the R&B superstar — like his musical predecessors — wasn't paid for the gig.
In short, the exposure artists get from the performance is enough for the National Football League to justify its no-pay policy. According to Samba TV (via Forbes), Usher's performance was viewed by 30.1 million households, which marked a 5% jump in viewership over Rihanna's Super Bowl halftime show in 2023.
The NFL does, however, pay for some expenses related to the Super Bowl halftime spectacle on behalf of the artists. The league confirmed to Forbes in 2016 that the league pays for the show's production costs and travel expenses for each artist. According to Reuters, expenses for the artists to play at the Super Bowl in 2020 reached $13 million. "There are so many aspects of it, the dancers, the lighting elements, the special effects," said Dan Parise, a halftime show producer with Roc Nation for Super Bowl LIV. "It's like a big jigsaw puzzle."
The NFL once tried to charge artists to play the Super Bowl halftime show
Thanks to the gig's exposure, the Super Bowl halftime show is so lucrative to artists that in 2015, the NFL attempted to charge Coldplay, Rihanna, and Katy Perry to play the big event, with the first two acts declining. Perry ultimately landed the gig and was determined to avoid the blemish of being the one artist to pay the league for the opportunity to play at its marquee game. "I don't want an asterisk by my name for playing the Super Bowl for the rest of my life. I want to be able to say I played the Super Bowl based on my talents and my merit, thank you very much," the singer told Forbes.
Like Perry, Usher is bound to benefit financially from his Super Bowl LVIII appearance thanks to a boost in commercial popularity. Something similar happened when Justin Timberlake's sales figures after his performance at the halftime show of Super Bowl LII in 2018 skyrocketed 534%, according to Billboard. Six years later, Usher released a new album, "Coming Home," just a few days before his performance at the big game; at the time of writing, it is the top-selling R&B album on Amazon. The Super Bowl gig is also certain to benefit the singer's recently announced "Usher: Past Present Future" tour of North America, which kicks off August 20 in Washington, D.C.