14 DAY TRIAL // The entire incident goes back to M.I.A.'s halftime performance during the 2012 Super Bowl, when she appeared on stage with Madonna and took it upon herself to personalize the act by flipping the bird on stage and also mouthing the words “I don't give a [expletive].”
The National Football Association promptly filed for breach of contract following some 222 complaints the FCC received over the rapper’s proclivity and sign language. It was forced to issue an apology along with the broadcasting network NBC, but it wasn't going to let the matter drop.
Last year in September, the NFL asked for $1.5 million (€1.07 million) in its arbitration claim citing “flagrant disregard for the values that form the cornerstone of the NFL brand and the Super Bowl.” Today, the NFL is adding a whopping $15 million (€10.7 million) to its claim, which is supposed to constitute the value of the advertising dollars the association lost with M.I.A.'s screen performance that lasted two minutes.
This triggered an immediate response from the singer who took to Twitter to blast the football giant. “This is what they want me to sign, that I've been fighting for two years on top of $16 million,” she said and also attached a photo of the documents.
The photo details how the NFL is planning to recuperate its losses, by using a tiered system in which they would take percentages of her income, based on how much she made. For every paycheck over half a million dollars but not bigger than two and a half million, the NFL would take 50 percent. If that paycheck would go over the five-million mark, the NFL claims 100 percent of the revenue.
The rapper fired back saying that the NFL are just large corporate bullies that are looking to “make an example” out of her for “daring to challenge” them. In her paperwork it is stated that “The claim for restitution lacks any basis in law, fact, or logic,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
To back up her claims, M.I.A. also gives some examples of previous artists who performed similar lewd acts during their Super Bowl appearances and walked away without as much as a slap on the wrist.
Among them, she mentions Michael Jackson's performance at the 1993 Super Bowl, when he grabbed his crotch in his signature move during Billie Jean, Prince's 2007 performance in which he simulated self-pleasuring with the neck of his guitar, and even Madonna's performance, which contained dancer of an unspecified age thrusting their pelvic regions in a lewd manner.