Kendrick Lamar Is Being Paid a Very Shocking Amount for His Super Bowl Performance
He’s having the best year of his life. With five Grammy wins under his belt in the last week alone, Kendrick Lamar will rock the nation with his Super Bowl Halftime performance.
Kendrick Lamar was announced as the Super Bowl Halftime Show headliner in September 2024. “My name is Kendrick Lamar, and I will be performing at Super Bowl 59. Will you be pulling up? I hope so,” the rapper said. “You know it’s only one opportunity to win a championship — no round twos.”
Related: How Many Grammys Does Kendrick Lamar Have? He Might Break Records With ‘Not Like Us’
Days before the performance, he talked to Apple Music about how “Not Like Us” helped him on his path towards the Big Game Day. “I wasn’t thinking about no Super Bowl for sure,” he said about writing the song. “We was thinking about the best verse, and how we gonna spit this five dollars at Church’s Chicken or something like that. I think, what I know is, the passion I have now is still the passion I had then. And I think that carried on to the Super Bowl. So it was all about being present.”
How much is Kendrick Lamar getting paid for his Super Bowl performance?
Kendrick Lamar is getting the surprising amount amount of $0. It was previously reported that Super Bowl Halftime performers do not get paid. However, NFL’s vice president of communications, Brian McCarthy, clarified to Newsweek, “The NFL covers all costs associated with the show and does pay the performers’ union scale. There is not an appearance fee, but the artists are indeed paid union scale.” The union scale is the minimum amount that bosses have to pay performers. It’s estimated that it’s “a fraction of the six- and seven-figure sums” the artists typically earn, according to Forbes.
According to National Football League spokesperson Joanna Hunter, Super Bowl Halftime Show performers aren’t paid but the NFL does cover the expenses for their performance. “We do not pay the artists,” Hunter told Forbes in 2016. “We cover expenses and production costs.” However, there is a limit to how much the NFL will pay. The Weeknd’s manager Wassim “Sal” Slaiby told Billboard in 2021 that the “Starboy” singer contributed $7 million of his own money to “make this halftime show be what he envisioned” when he performed at the Super Bowl LV.
Though Kendrick isn’t being paid for his performance, his music sales are about the explode. In data compiled by Forbes, 2023 Super Bowl performer Rihanna’s digital album sales climbed by 301%, while digital song sales surged by 390%. Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” swept all of its wins at the Grammys including Song of the Year and Record of the Year the week before the Super Bowl. Spotify saw that the song increased 110% in streams the day after the awards show, so we could say that it might actually be record-breaking.
Do dancers get paid for the Super Bowl?
Super Bowl dancers get paid union rates based on SAG-AFTRA guidelines. Dancers should be paid between $788 and $1030 a day, depending on how many are in a routine. For rehearsals, they are
When The Weeknd performed at the Super Bowl in 2021, the Los Angeles Times investigated that “paid dancers received $712 for show day and $45 per hour for their rehearsal time, as well as a $30 per diem and a $250 COVID stipend if a dancer was asked to report to a clinic for a test on a nonwork day. Unpaid dancers sat in stadium bleachers for up to two hours in the cold while waiting to rehearse as their paid counterparts spent that time in green rooms.”
The professional dancers are different from volunteered dancers on the field. Jana Fleishman, executive vice president of strategy and communications for Halftime producers Roc Nation told the Los Angeles Times, “As in years past, it is completely up to the volunteer candidates to participate. Volunteers are not asked to learn choreography.” Field cast performers are paid $15 an hour.
After a controversy where paid dancers were dancing along non-paid dancers, SAG-AFTRA said, “no professional dancers will be asked to work for free as part of the halftime show. SAG-AFTRA will be advising our professional dancer members that they should not be rehearsing or working on the Super Bowl halftime show without compensation.”
