Did the Dallas Cowboys, Kansas City Chiefs, Cleveland Browns, Los Angeles Chargers, Green Bay Packers, Philadelphia Eagles, Denver Broncos, or any team, petition the NFL to replace Bad Bunny as the performer for the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show? No, that's not true: There have been no team announcements of such a demand, and no news media has reported on it. Similar false claims have been made about singer Bob Seger petitioning the NFL. The only source for the claims is a series of websites and Facebook sports fan pages operated out of Vietnam, following a pattern of false stories previously identified by Lead Stories.
One example of the claims appeared in a post (archived here) shared by Blue Star Breakdown Facebook page on September 30, 2025. The post read:
BREAKING: The Dallas Cowboys have officially petitioned the NFL to replace Bad Bunny as the performer for the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime Show, with Jerry Jones voicing his outrage and even threatening a player strike if the league does not reverse its decision...
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Oct 2 15:38:26 2025 UTC)
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of Facebook)
The Blue Star Breakdown Facebook post includes a link to an article (archived here) that opens:
Dallas Cowboys Petition NFL to Replace Bad Bunny at 2026 Super Bowl Halftime Show, Jerry Jones Threatens Player Strike
Cowboys Challenge NFL Decision.
In an unprecedented move, the Dallas Cowboys have officially petitioned the NFL to reconsider the selection of Bad Bunny as the performer for the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime Show. Led by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, the franchise has expressed strong opposition, citing concerns about the cultural implications of the choice.Jones reportedly believes that featuring an openly LGBT artist at such a high-profile sporting event is harmful to the traditional culture of American football. "Bringing an LGBT singer to perform in an important final is the stupidest thing," Jones stated. "American culture and this sport will be weakened and die by them. Let's change that thinking because this is a sport for strong people."
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of xinloc.com)
None of the quotes or details in the story are found reported anywhere by U.S. news media nor are they on any of the official team websites or social media pages.
The domain registry information for the website -- xinloc.com -- is private, but Meta provides transparency details about the Facebook pages posting the nearly identical claims about at least seven NFL teams and a rock legend.
The posts claimed to be official pages for the Dallas Cowboys (archived here), Kansas City Chiefs (archived here), Cleveland Browns (archived here), Los Angeles Chargers (archived here), Green Bay Packers (archived here), Philadelphia Eagles (archived here), Denver Broncos (archived here) and rock singer Bob Seger (archived here). They are all tied to Vietnam.
This compilation of the fake posts also includes a screenshot of the Meta transparency information, which discloses where the fan pages are managed:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot compilation of Facebook)
Fake fan pages managed from Southeast Asia have spread across Facebook timelines since Meta ended (archived here) its third-party fact-checking program, which Lead Stories was a part of for six years. We have identified and debunked dozens (archived here) of such pages and websites in recent months.
Facebook users can easily identify these types of accounts by accessing the transparency data.
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshots of Facebook transparency reports.)
