Rihanna ended her electrifying first live performance in seven years suspended high above the State Farm Stadium field, singing her hit “Diamonds,” as both the live audience and the internet screamed its approval.
Let’s flashback to last year. When the opportunity presented itself for Apple to consider sponsoring the Super Bowl halftime show, the decision on whether to do it was immediate. “We didn’t have any hesitation, the minute we talked about it,” says Apple’s vice president of marketing, Tor Myhren. “It was one conversation.”
Pepsi dropped its halftime show sponsorship last May after a decade-long run that had its ups (Beyoncé!) and downs (Maroon 5!). Does anyone remember who had the sponsorship before Pepsi? Don’t tread on me: It was Bridgestone, the tire company. So, this year marked the first time ever that a halftime music sponsor would be a brand that actually has products related to, ya know, music.
“It felt like a no brainer, to be honest,” says Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music and Beats. “It felt really natural for us, and it felt like the right moment for us. There’s not much more science behind it than that.”
When it was first announced that Apple signed its $250 million, multi-year halftime show deal with the NFL, Myhren and Schusser knew the opportunity in front of them.
“The Super Bowl halftime show is probably the most valuable 12 minutes of media in the world,” says Myhren. “What we wanted to do is take that 12 minutes and stretch it out into many weeks in terms of the excitement around it. And clearly, in Rihanna, we had the perfect partner.”
Schusser says that if you make a list of the biggest music moments in the year, this is by far the biggest one. (Yes, I know the Grammys were a week earlier. I also know only 12.4 million people tuned in.) “We thought what we do as a music service, with the talent we have, the technology we have, the global reach, we thought we could make this a much richer experience.”
