It did has many stuntmen to support.
The Weeknd and its field full of bandaged doppelgängers gave a money performance at the 2021 Super Bowl halftime show. But did the 30-year-old “Blinding Lights” singer really get any money for the show?
Representatives of the show’s sponsor Pepsi and The Weeknd declined to say whether he raised a lot of money for his performance in the widely seen stadium.
But the likely answer is no.
All artists in the Super Bowl range, from Beyoncé to Bruno Mars, worked basically for free. Despite running out of stadiums on world tours, most A-listers in the range are reportedly paid “on the union scale,” which is “a fraction of the six- and seven-digit sums” they collect on record, according to Forbes.
Usually, these stars are underpaid, as they can get up to 104 million pairs of eyes at no cost to them. This usually leads to a huge increase in sales and flows.
Last year’s break artists, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, collectively sold 21,000 music downloads – an 893% increase over the previous day, according to Billboard.
But, unlike previous performers at the break, The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, really went into the red to make his appearance especially spectacular.
“Abel spent almost $ 7 million of his own money in addition to the already generous budgets to make this halftime show what he imagined,” a star representative told the Post.
At a press conference before the big show, he even alluded to the financial constraints of trying, saying that he would like to do a dramatic feat like Diana Ross did in 1996 – when she left the stadium by helicopter – but “I don’t think so I have enough money to do that. “
However, the exposure may be priceless.
The Weeknd makes reference to his career milestone in a commercial that preceded the big show. In the ad, he goes through a montage of previous music videos passing on the wall while a reflective narration narrates the journey that leads to the Super Bowl field, where a cheering stadium awaits him.
“What we create changes us. Each performance, a new chapter; each stage, a new beginning ”, says a narration.
But it may take a while for The Weeknd to see the fruit of his work in the Super Bowl, in terms of money. He announced last week that he would push his world tour another year, until 2022.