Just when you thought that the NFL’s halftime shows couldn’t get any more over the top and career-boostingly important, this year, they’ve only gone and invented a brand new Christmas Day event so that they can do it all again and sell it to Netflix.
Yes, starting what you suspect they hope will be a brand new annual tradition, 2024 will not only have played host to the annual Super Bowl event – Super Bowl LVIII, which took place in February and saw the Taylor Swift-approved Kansas City Chiefs romp to victory – but will also house a brand new Christmas Gameday game beamed live on 25 December, which – of course – will have its own special musical half-time highlight.
And while February’s ‘proper’ Super Bowl show featured a resurrected Usher reminding everyone of his greatness and wising up a few new 2024 fans, the newly minted NFL Christmas Gameday (Live on Netflix) will have a halftime show from (arguably) the Queen of 2024, Beyoncé. Swifties: Discuss…
In fact, the whole affair promises to be a made-for-TV, off-the-chart, all-star musical banger with not only a special intro performance of All I Want For Christmas Is You from Mariah Carey (obvs) but also (maybe) a live appearance from – gulp – Taylor Swift.
Or more accurately, Mariah Carey has recorded a performance of AIWFC exclusively for Netflix (as she’ll doubtless be putting her feet up following her Mariah Carey’s Christmas Time US tour while prepping for her The Celebration of Mimi Las Vegas residency in January) and Taylor Swift will, it’s thought, be in the audience (again) watching her boyfriend Travis Kelce kick even more butt while attracting the bulk of the cameras.
Oh yes. There’s the small matter of some ‘football’, too, with not one but two games taking place. Super Bowl winners (and Swift favourites) the Kansas City Chiefs are up against the Pittsburgh Steelers at 1pm ET (6pm UK) followed by the Baltimore Ravens versus the Houston Texans at 4:30pm ET (9:30pm UK).
Beyoncé’s set will be delivered halftime during that Ravens Texans game, and she’s just teased the event to her Instagram followers with a clip showing that – unsurprisingly – the show will most likely feature extensive promotion of her country-inspired album, Cowboy Carter.
In it we see The ‘Yonce puting the final bauble on her Christmas cactus before finger-pistoling a pair of stars to top it off. Time will tell if she can similarly muster up some special guest performances from the album’s all-star collaborators Miley Cyrus, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Linda Martell and Post Malone.
With so much star-power on display we're just grateful that it doesn't clash with Christmas Top of the Pops… Yee-haw!
