Super Bowl 2016

ET Online (Super Bowl 50 airs Feb. 7, 2016 on CBS.)

“Put in Beyonce with Bruno, add Taylor Swift up there, all of them up there,” said Dallas Cowboys great Michael Irvin. “It’s Super Bowl 50, it doesn’t get any bigger than that!”
“I like John Legend,” Terrell Davis weighed in. “I’m a John Legend kind of guy. I think that would be kinda cool to bring John in there with Bruno. You can’t go wrong with a little Snoop Dogg, spice it up a little bit.”
“Bruno is a blast,” Warner told ET. “I loved Katy Perry last year, loved Bruno. I’m sure anybody that does it is gonna be great.”

The NFL has invited back Bruno Mars for next year’s Super Bowl 50 halftime show, a source has confirmed to Billboard.

The “Uptown Funk” singer was on the big stage just two years ago for Super Bowl XLVIII with special guests Red Hot Chili Peppers, followed by Katy Perry last year.

This time around, a source confirmed, Mars was asked to “curate” the halftime show, meaning we could probably expect some impressive guests to join him, if he agrees.

Mars’ previous halftime performance drew 115 million viewers, according to Nielsen – making it the second highest viewership for the halftime special, following only Perry’s last year (which saw 121 million viewers).

Director of media events for the NFL Sarah Moll talked to Billboard in December last year about booking the Super Bowl halftime special. She said then that the initial conversation to book Mars for Super Bowl XLVIII got going because she was a “huge fan” of his.

Following the massive success of Mars’ “Uptown Funk” collaboration with Mark Ronson, he is currently working on new material that could line up with his big performance.

“Myself and our producer, Ricky Kirshner, were both personal fans of Bruno and had seen him in concert and knew what he could do,” she said. “And it was a lot of just telling folks here and getting folks excited about Bruno and taking them to shows and letting them see what he could do. And that’s kind of what got it going.”

While Moll said her being a fan alone is not the decision-maker in booking talent for the massive event, and ultimately it’s decided by the league’s commissioner and its executives, “I like to think that I have somewhat of a say and I know I do have somewhat of a say. I definitely let my personal opinions come out, you have to.”

She also said her greatest accomplishment for 2014 was booking Mars for the Super Bowl XLVIII halftime special, breaking the halftime record of the time in so doing. She added, “But I look at it really is Super Bowl XLVIII as a whole and the day really encompassed music from the beginning of the day all the way through halftime.”

Reps for Mars and the NFL had not responded to Billboard’s request for comment at time of publishing. Super Bowl 50 will take place on Feb. 7, 2016.

Source: Billboard