The Apple Music Halftime Show became the most-awarded Super Bowl performance in Emmy history, while Jay-Z picked up his third Emmy as a producer.
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show just made history twice: once on the field, and again at the Creative Emmy Awards. The Apple Music Halftime Show won seven Emmys on Saturday, setting a new record for the most Emmys ever awarded to a halftime performance.
It was also Bad Bunny’s first Emmy win. His performance took outstanding variety special (live), a category the Super Bowl show had only reached once before — Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance won it the year prior. The win puts the halftime show in rare company, and gives the production a clean sweep across the technical and creative categories that shape a live broadcast event.
A halftime show built for the Emmy ballot
The awards came across the core disciplines that make a live event work: music direction, choreography, sound mixing, lighting design, technical direction/camerawork and directing. That spread tells the story. This was not a single-category win driven by star power. It was a production recognized from top to bottom.
Jay-Z, listed as a producer of the halftime show, earned his third Emmy for the performance. He previously won for Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, which had held the record for most Emmys won by a Super Bowl performance until Bad Bunny’s show passed it. The result how much the halftime slot has become a prestige production as much as a pop-culture spectacle.
Sabrina Carpenter breaks through, Taylor Swift falls short
Elsewhere at the Creative Emmy Awards, Sabrina Carpenter won her first Emmy for outstanding variety special (pre-recorded) as performer and executive producer on Disney+’s The Muppet Show reboot. Her win came over Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour | The Final Show in the category.
That result gives Carpenter a new credential beyond the stage and the screen: an Emmy as both performer and executive producer. For a younger generation of artist-producers, that matters. It is a credit that travels well in a business where ownership, format and packaging carry real weight.
Night one also favored established TV brands
Night one of the Creative Emmy Awards also went big for The Traitors and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which each collected five Emmys for episodes from its final season. Billy Joel’s documentary And So It Goes won outstanding sound mixing for a nonfiction program.
Saturday Night Live also picked up an Emmy for outstanding makeup for a variety, nonfiction or reality program for its Bad Bunny-hosted episode, though the host does not receive an award for that category.
For the Super Bowl halftime show, the message was clear: the biggest live music slot in television is now being judged like a premium production, and this year’s winner set a new bar.
