Speculation Surrounding the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show Is Already Underway

And so it begins. We've only just put away the wings and the potato chip bags, but it's not too early to begin speculation about next year's Super Bowl Halftime Show. And at least one former Super Bowl champ has already chosen who he wants to see at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans in 2025: rapper Lil Wayne.

While nothing has been teased or revealed (and typically the acts are not announced until the fall), former NFL and MLB star Deion Sanders has already weighed in on his choice. "Coach Prime" took to X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) on Feb. 11 to make a suggestion:

"@nfl I fully expect @LilTunechi to be apart of the @nflsuperbowl 2025 in New Orleans. Thank u in advance. Much Love, CoachPrime."

The question is: what has Lil Wayne thought about this? Well, coincidentally enough, the rapper had turned up for a talk at 4hunnidpodcast on Feb. 9 when he was asked point blank if he would ever perform at a halftime show.

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"I will not lie to you, I have not gotten a call," Weezy told the hosts. "We keeping our fingers crossed. I'm working hard -- I'm going to make sure this next album and everything else I do is killer, so I'm going to make it very hard for them to not holler at the boy."

Super Bowl LIX is scheduled to be played at the Louisiana Superdome on February 5, 2025. Wayne, of course, is the biggest hip-hop star to emerge out of the Crescent City in decades.

(Of course, it's hardly a requirement that Super Bowl Halftime performers hail from the region where the game is being held. In fact, they rarely do, with 2022's Los Angeles-set Super Bowl offering a rare exception, featuring hometown heroes Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar. In 2018, Justin Timberlake drew a mixed reception for his brief Prince tribute in Minneapolis' U.S. Bank Stadium.)

The Super Bowl Halftime Show was not always one of the year's hottest gigs. It wasn't so long ago that the halfway interval was largely the territory of college marching bands and acts like Up With People. However, starting with the 1991 halftime show, pop music started to take a stand and with elaborate stage shows and multi-act performances, the once-desolate gap of grass became must-see television across the world.

That all came to a screeching halt in 2004. MTV, who had successfully produced the entertainment since 2001, were universally lambasted when Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" caused such a stir (CBS was fined but ultimately had that overturned), that in the ensuing years, while totally playing it safe, the biggest names in pop and rock dominated the stage. In 2019, performers Maroon 5 drew the lowest ratings the Halftime Show had seen in a decade.

Taking over the Halftime Show after the poor performance of 2019, Jay-Z's Roc Nation has since worked to modernize and reinvigorate the big game's entertainment, booking acts like Rihanna, the Weeknd, and a Jennifer Lopez-Shakira bill for the Miami-set game in 2020.

Since that year, the NFL has also started playing "Lift Every Voice and Sing," also known as the Black national anthem, before each game including the Super Bowl. As Forbes noted in a recent article, "With the Roc Nation partnership, there have been some notable changes in how the NFL shows up that makes it more inclusive."