NBC Ripped for Only Showing Seconds of Lindsey Stirling’s NFL Halftime Show

NBC is getting a lot of hate for cutting off Lindsey Stirling’s much-anticipated halftime show during Thanksgiving’s NFL game. The dancer and violinist performed during the halftime show at Lambeau Field in Green Bay during the Packers and Dolphins game. According to USA Today, after NBC aired just seconds of Stirling’s performance in favor of a feature about Dolphins fullback Alec Ingold, many fans were disappointed about the lack of violin.

“Massive L from NBC Sports for giving us a canned human interest story instead of showing Lindsey Stirling, which easily would have been the best halftime performance of the day,” TheTradingBloc on X said. Other halftime performances on Thanksgiving included Shaboozey at the Lions vs. Bears game on CBS and Lainey Wilson at the Cowboys vs. Giants game on Fox, both of which were shown in full.

“Shame on you for not showing Lindsey Stirling’s performance during halftime! That was the only reason I watched this evening! So disappointing!” thegreenpuma88 said. “What the hell? Was really pumped to see Lindsey Stirling play the Packers halftime show, but only got to see a few seconds,” RudeOnion expressed. “No halftime shows on NBC Sports?”

Meanwhile, Stirling herself apologized to fans who tuned in hoping to see her perform. The former America’s Got Talent contestant took to Instagram to share a video from her busy holiday at Lambeau, saying, “Thank you so much to the [Packers] for having us and for treating us like queens! Thank you to all the Green Bay fans for being so enthusiastic during our performance. It was a night I’ll never forget — my first stadium performance. Sorry to all my fans who tuned in to watch and didn’t get to see it. I appreciate all the posts of support.”

According to USA Today, an NBC Sports spokesperson shared that “the network has presented an in-depth, human-interest feature during halftime of the Thanksgiving primetime game each year since 2013, often followed by a brief showing of the in-stadium performance.” That doesn’t seem to be stopping fans from still being upset, myself included who watched the game and was definitely disappointed by the few seconds that Lindsey Stirling was on screen. It’s definitely a shame, but at least there are probably a lot of videos from the performance making the rounds online.