As the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks take the field at Levi’s Stadium for Super Bowl LX, the spectacle unfolding on the gridiron is competing with a very different kind of drama — one playing out in federal document dumps, VIP party rooms, and the corridors of political ambition. For the NFL’s crown jewel event, the cloud hanging over it this year isn’t about deflated footballs or referee calls. It’s about the man who controls the halftime stage, the names surfacing in the Epstein files, and a Super Bowl weekend party circuit where billionaires, politicians, and hip-hop moguls are mixing in ways that demand scrutiny.

The Files That Won’t Go Away

On January 31, the Department of Justice released its largest batch yet from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation — more than 3 million pages of documents, 2,000 videos, and roughly 180,000 images, all made public under the Epstein Files Transparency Act signed into law by President Trump in November 2025.

Buried in the avalanche of material was a name that would reverberate through Super Bowl week: Shawn Corey Carter — better known as Jay-Z.

According to an FBI report from 2019, a victim alleged she had been drugged and sexually abused over several years. In the report, the victim stated she once woke up in a room with both Harvey Weinstein and Jay-Z present. The report was archived as part of the broader Epstein investigation file.

And yet, for a man who currently holds the keys to the most-watched entertainment event in America, the timing is devastating.

This isn’t Jay-Z’s first collision with allegations of this nature. In December 2024, a Jane Doe amended a civil lawsuit — originally filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs — to add Carter as a defendant, accusing both men of sexually assaulting her when she was 13 years old at an MTV Video Music Awards afterparty in 2000. Carter aggressively denied the allegations, calling them a “blackmail attempt.” Shawn Carter’s infamous attorney Alex Spiro – described as a “stone cold killer” in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails – was alleged to have went on a campaign to smear the accuser’s attorney Tony Buzbee. The picture gets much darker as the full extent of Spiro’s alleged conspiracy gets unravelled in court. Buzbee also alleges that Roc Nation employees impersonated Texas state officials, and engaged in barratry.

Alex Spiro has gone from being called one of America’s most powerful attorneys to somewhat of a pariah himself. From impersonating law enforcement – badge and all – to unprofessional behavior in the court of law, Spiro’s moves have been raising eyebrows.

The Man Behind the Curtain

Since 2019, Jay-Z’s entertainment empire Roc Nation has held a singular and largely unchecked role in American sports entertainment: it selects who performs at the Super Bowl halftime show. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has described the arrangement as “a mutually positive relationship,” and last October he made a revealing admission: “Jay-Z understands the platform… it doesn’t get real deep because he knows I’m not going to challenge him.”

Read that again. The commissioner of the most powerful sports league on the planet doesn’t challenge Jay-Z’s choices. Not on artistic grounds, not on political grounds, not even as explosive allegations swirl. Some critics have questioned whether the business relationship between the NFL and Roc Nation, could involve blackmail.

This year, Jay-Z chose Bad Bunny to headline the coveted Super Bowl half time show. Born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio in Puerto Rico, Bunny is a freshly minted Album of the Year Grammy winner for his all-Spanish-language record Debí Tirar Más Fotos. The choice has led many critics question how much power Jay-Z and Roc Nation hold over both The Grammys and the NFL.

The selection was immediately polarizing, and not simply because Bad Bunny performs exclusively in Spanish. At the 2026 Grammys, just one week before the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny used his acceptance speech to deliver a pointed political message: “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say: ICE out.“

Bad Bunny has refused to tour in the United States this year, citing immigration enforcement concerns. “There was the issue of like, f—ing ICE could be outside [my concert],” he told i-D Magazine. He’s made the Super Bowl his sole U.S. appearance — an event organized by Jay-Z, promoted by the NFL, and taking place in Gavin Newsom’s California.

Conservative commentators, including Newsmax’s Greg Kelly and Fox News’ Tomi Lahren, have called for boycotts. President Trump called the selection “absolutely ridiculous” and said, “I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred.” Turning Point USA organized a competing “All-American Halftime Show” featuring Kid Rock, Lee Brice, and Brantley Gilbert. At least six states showed significant boycott sentiment on social media, according to geotagged data compiled by BetOnline.

Reports indicate that Jay-Z has been actively encouraging Bad Bunny to be “fearless” on the Super Bowl stage. “Why play it safe?” Jay-Z reportedly advised.

The question is: fearless in service of what, exactly?

Since Roc Nation took the reins in 2019, every halftime selection — Jennifer Lopez (who staged children in cages on the field), Kendrick Lamar (whose set was widely seen as a commentary on race in America), and now Bad Bunny — has doubled as a political statement. There’s a pattern here, and it didn’t materialize by accident. ESPN reported that at least one NFL owner privately expressed concern that the Bad Bunny decision could threaten antitrust approval for the NFL’s pending deal with ESPN. “I told Roger he should’ve thought through that better,” the unnamed owner reportedly told Goodell.

Roger Goodell didn’t blink. The show went on. Alarmingly, Jay-Z called the shots.

Saturday Night in San Francisco: The Party That Tells the Story

On Saturday evening, February 7, San Francisco’s Pier 48 hosted what has quietly become one of the most consequential annual gatherings in American power: Michael Rubin’s Fanatics Super Bowl Party.

Rubin — the CEO of Fanatics, the sports commerce giant whose has had his share of controversy – transformed his annual Super Bowl bash into a mandatory stop for certain celebrities in the overlapping worlds of sports, entertainment, politics, and finance. This year’s guest list included: Tom Brady, Robert Kraft, Jay-Z, Kevin Costner, Kendall Jenner, Jamie Foxx, Travis Scott, Cardi B, Jon Bon Jovi, Jerry Jones, Meek Mill, Odell Beckham Jr., and dozens more.

Jay-Z held court in a roped-off VIP section next to the stage. And elsewhere in the room, cameras and eyewitnesses captured something that deserves more attention than it received: Rubin in conversation with California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Newsom — widely expected to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 — had been making the rounds at multiple exclusive Super Bowl events all week, though his team appeared to be working overtime to keep him away from cameras and reporters. At one event, a Rao’s pop-up dinner hosted by NFL legend Joe Montana, security was overheard saying they were trying to “duck” journalists as they hustled the governor inside. Nancy Pelosi was also spotted at the Rao’s event, reportedly chatting with the CEO of the prediction market Polymarket.

By Saturday, Newsom had dropped the pretense of keeping a low profile. He declared February 8 “Bad Bunny Day” in California — in a post written entirely in caps, deliberately mimicking Trump’s social media style. “I am also a huge fan of Puerrrrrrrto Rico,” Newsom wrote, trolling the president while amplifying a halftime show that the sitting president had called “a terrible choice.”

The Newsom-Rubin encounter raises several questions, including: what does a controversial tech-sports billionaire who throws the most exclusive party in American entertainment have to discuss with a radical governor positioning himself for a presidential run? Perhaps nothing of consequence. Perhaps everything.

Rubin’s orbit has expanded dramatically in recent years. He counts among his close friends Robert Kraft, Jay-Z, and Meek Mill, and his annual events have become the connective tissue binding celebrities of a certain ilk to political power. Since the arrest and incarceration of Sean “Diddy” Combs in September 2024 on federal sex trafficking charges, Rubin has emerged as the undisputed social kingpin of the hip-hop-meets-sports-mogul circuit, hosting the gatherings where deals get whispered and alliances get cemented. At Saturday’s party, Rubin told Page Six it was “really easy” assembling this year’s guest list because his “closest friends” — referring to the Kraft family — had a team in the game. Interestingly, many of Diddy’s former guest list have migrated over to Rubin’s events.

Meanwhile, Governor Newsom’s Super Bowl weekend behavior carried its own strategic logic. His “Bad Bunny Day” declaration wasn’t just trolling — it was a campaign move, broadcasting cultural solidarity with an alleged Marxist while positioning himself opposite Trump on immigration. It was politics conducted via halftime show, with Roc Nation providing the propoganda.

The Uncomfortable Questions

Here is what we know: A man whose name appeared in the Epstein documents one week ago controls who performs for 150 million viewers at the Super Bowl. That man chose an artist who used the Grammy stage to condemn federal law enforcement, and reportedly urged that artist to be “fearless” on the biggest stage in American sports. The NFL commissioner has publicly stated he doesn’t challenge that man’s decisions. The governor of the state hosting the game turned the halftime show into a political weapon, declared a state holiday for the performer, and spent the week attending private events with the questionable sports billionaire who has become the social nucleus of this Diddy 2.0 network of power.

And somewhere in the DOJ’s 3 million pages of documents, an FBI file, – a reminder that the intersection of fame, money, and access has consequences that outlast any Super Bowl.

The game will end tonight. The questions won’t.

This is an opinion article.