Critics slam World Cup's first halftime show as 'slick, surreal and entirely unnecessary'

The 27-minute halftime show featuring BTS, Madonna, Shakira and Justin Bieber during the 2026 FIFA World Cup final has drawn a scathing review from a global sports outlet.

New York New Jersey Stadium turned into a concert venue after the first half of the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina on Sunday. This was the first halftime show in the World Cup’s 96-year history and was modeled after the NFL’s Super Bowl halftime show.

“It’s football, but not as we know it. It is American sport, exactly as we know it,” The Athletic wrote in its article titled “The World Cup half-time show was slick, surreal and entirely unnecessary.”

The show opened with a prerecorded segment in which Madonna — accompanied by Brazilian football legends Ronaldo and Ronaldinho — enters the stadium in a car. Madonna’s introduction was followed by a brief orchestra performance by human musicians and puppets from the children’s television program “Sesame Street” (1969–).

BTS then performed its hit “Dynamite” (2020) live. 

Bieber slowed the momentum that the band had built with an acoustic rendition of “Everything Hallelujah” (2025), after which Shakira and Burna Boy re-energized the crowd with “Dai Dai,” the tournament’s official song.

The World Cup halftime show may have broken ground as the first of its kind, but it also halted the sport’s biggest match for 27 minutes so that “Bieber could serenade half the planet with a guitar while looking ever so slightly bored,” according to the Athletic.

“While everything was very well choreographed, fun, big and colourful, [the performances were] all pretty random and felt very contrived,” the outlet writes. “This was clearly a rip-off of the very well-established Super Bowl show.”

Despite the star-studded lineup, some viewers were also disappointed by the organizer’s attempt to cram too much into just 11 minutes.

Former England striker Wayne Rooney was equally unimpressed.

“The best part was when it finished,” he said during a BBC appearance. “I like a lot of them artists, but I thought [the show] was crap.”

Some defended the performances as at least being more entertaining than the match itself after both teams remained scoreless in the first 90 minutes.

Another criticism was FIFA’s use of the World Cup as a commercial vehicle. Bank of America sponsored the show, Topps secured its naming rights and companies including Visa and YouTube Music were involved. The Athletic also noted that Apple reportedly paid $50 million to sponsor the Super Bowl equivalent.

The Laws of the Game issued by the International Football Association Board state that halftime must not exceed 15 minutes, but the World Cup final’s break ran for more than 27 minutes.

The Athletic said that the question running through its mind throughout the show was simply “Why?”

“Why is the greatest footballer to have ever kicked a ball being made to endure the longest half-time of his entire career so that Chris Martin could tell us all to believe in love?” it writes.

Against that backdrop, the sight of BTS performing one of its hits while Lamine Yamal stretched to keep his muscles warm during the longest halftime of his career was hardly surprising, the outlet continues.

“Was [the show] any good? Will we be talking about it for years to come? And, more importantly, was it worth it?” The Athletic asks.

Its verdict was unequivocal: Halftime should not have lasted 27 minutes, and such shows should “absolutely not” become a permanent fixture in football.

BY PARK LIN [[email protected]]