It was everything Chris Martin’s opinion.
During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the Coldplay frontman called Hugh Evans, CEO of Global Citizen, who chose the Global Citizen Festival for him, with something new to present. “Wouldn’t it be amazing,” Evans recalls saying, “if we could do the first ever World Cup halftime show?” Evans agreed, and contacted FIFA president Gianni Infantino at the organization’s headquarters in Switzerland to sell him on Martin’s plan. He didn’t need to.
Infantino already had the same idea—he was also a Coldplay fan. “So he had already decided independently that he wanted to work with Coldplay and that he wanted to fulfill this dream,” Evans said.
The result of those talks, which will focus on Sunday’s World Cup final between Spain and Argentina at New York New Jersey Stadium, is a huge but 11-minute performance featuring Justin Bieber, Madonna, BTS, and Shakira. They will be joined by Coldplay and Staten Island’s PS22 school choir, and watched by millions of people in homes, bars, and street corners around the world.
The show is part of an effort to raise $100 billion for Global Citizen’s youth education efforts around the world. FIFA is donating one dollar for every ticket sold during the tournament to the fund, and Shakira is donating prizes from her World Cup song with Burna Boy—“Dai Dai”—to the effort as well.
Not that all World Cup fans are excited to see this show. Football fans have been skeptical that the finals will have a break schedule for months. The World Cup has never done anything like that, the argument goes, and it doesn’t need to now. Given that halftime games are similar to the Super Bowl, some fans think that having a halftime show is part of an effort to “Americanize the World Cup,” or to make it more attractive to viewers in countries where soccer is not popular. Some, for example, have been offended by things like “hydration breaks” that are seen as another way to get eyeballs in advertisements.
“The World Cup generally focuses its musical understanding on one popular song and the opening ceremony focuses on the participating nation,” said Tiffany Naiman, director of the Berry Gordy Music Industry Center at UCLA. “So when FIFA unveiled the 11-minute spectacle, featuring Madonna and Justin Bieber, and Tom Cruise accompanying the closing ceremony, it read to some as an import of American sensibilities made for TV.”
Yes, Tom Cruise. As he did at the closing ceremony of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Cruise is scheduled to appear during the World Cup closing ceremony before the final match.
Naiman insists that while some may fear the inclusion of a half-time event makes the event American, it is made up of an international list of artists. Bieber is from Canada, and his home country is the host of the Cup. Most of the acts are not from the US. “Ultimately, what is being done around the world is not the American culture as a manufacturing model,” he says. “FIFA borrows the language of the Super Bowl while infusing it with artists that reflect the landscape of its audience.”
This focus on global appeal has been important to Evans, and it has attracted at least one influential international fan base: the BTS Army. Members of the Army have been talking about them in recent weeks, throwing away their purple hearts. They also helped Global Citizen get closer to its fundraising goal: They raised about $40,000 for Global Citizen’s fund in the first week “without being asked,” Evans said.
Interest in the halftime show is also coming from Kalshi and Polymarket, both of which saw tens of billions of dollars in World Cup market trade, according to a CNBC report. Another Kalshi market had Shakira’s “Hips Dont Lie” featured as a potential highlight of the show. Polymarket chose “Dai Dai.” The latter seems to have more chances as it is the official song of the World Cup, and includes Burna Boy, who is also expected to sing.
