ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Long before he headlined the Super Bowl LX halftime show Sunday night, global superstar Bad Bunny performed to a sold-out crowd at MainGate Nightclub in Allentown in January 2017, a gig the venue’s owner calls one of the proudest moments in the club’s 45-year history.
The show, held on Jan. 20, 2017, came barely a month after the Puerto Rican artist released his breakout single “Soy Peor,” which peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart.
At the time, Bad Bunny was a virtually unknown SoundCloud artist who had only recently stopped working as a supermarket bagger in Puerto Rico.
Dominic Germano, owner of MainGate, said he was skeptical when local promoters Panama Cash and Jose Nigaglioni pitched the booking.
“I too was once a clueless gringo of sorts,” Germano wrote in a Facebook post reflecting on the show. “The name alone made me think twice as how could a trap artist with the name ‘Bad Bunny’ have street cred? Welp, I was wrong.”
The event, billed as “Bad Bunny En Vivo,” was a 21-and-older show at the 2,000-plus-capacity nightclub at the Allentown Fairgrounds, with tickets sold through Tickeri.com, a platform specializing in Latin events.
Germano recalled sitting with the young artist in a makeshift green room in the Fairgrounds Hotel dining room before the set. Bad Bunny appeared nervous, he said, and the two sat together in awkward silence — Germano spoke little Spanish, and the performer spoke little English at the time.
“After the show we all knew that this young man was extremely special talent,” Germano wrote.
The Allentown gig was among Bad Bunny’s earliest sold-out performances in the United States. For comparison, when he played a theater on the Las Vegas Strip several months later in May 2017, he drew only about 100 fans, and the venue lost money on the show, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Bad Bunny’s rise after the MainGate show was rapid. His 2018 collaboration with Cardi B and J Balvin, “I Like It,” topped the Billboard Hot 100, and his track with Drake, “Mia,” reached No. 5 that October. He has since won six Grammy Awards — including album of the year for “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” a first for a Spanish-language record — and become one of the highest-grossing touring artists in the world.
Across the Lehigh Valley on Sunday, Latino communities gathered to celebrate what many dubbed the “Benito Bowl.” Victor Martinez, owner of Allentown-based La Mega radio station, hosted a watch party at the Puerto Rican Club in Bethlehem, broadcasting live on air. Sarandonga, a restaurant on Hamilton Street in Allentown, held its own watch party.
Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk joined the La Mega event and delivered a proclamation in English and Spanish declaring Feb. 8, 2026, “Benito Bowl Day” in the city of Allentown and the Lehigh Valley.
“The city of Allentown is proud to be the 8th largest Puerto Rican community on the mainland, and we’re still growing,” Tuerk read from the proclamation, which celebrated “Boricuas who are everyday heroes and those who ascend to the global stage.”
Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk, second from right, and La Mega radio owner Victor Martinez, third from left, join community members at a Super Bowl watch party at the Puerto Rican Club in Bethlehem, Pa., on Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. Tuerk proclaimed the date “Benito Bowl Day” in honor of Bad Bunny’s halftime performance. (Photo courtesy La Mega Allentown)
Tuerk encouraged “all Allentonians to get to know their Puerto Rican neighbors, celebrate the culture, be kind to one another, and enjoy the show.”
“You have a majority Puerto Rican, Latino community here in the Lehigh Valley. There is a sense of pride in the community,” Martinez told the Morning Call ahead of the game.
MainGate, located at 448 N. 17th St., had long been a hub for Latin music programming in the Lehigh Valley, hosting reggaeton and Latin trap artists as part of its regular “Latin Fridays” nights. Allentown’s significant Latino population made the city a natural stop for up-and-coming Latin artists working the small-venue circuit.
The nightclub permanently closed in September 2025 after nearly 45 years in business. Germano cited noise complaints, rising insurance costs, crowd-control challenges, and costly lawsuits in announcing the closure.
The venue, founded by his parents in 1980, held its final show in November 2024. Germano still owns the space, which currently serves as a cat shelter, and operates the Fairgrounds Hotel restaurant next door, where he said he plans to create a MainGate museum on the second floor to preserve the club’s history.
Before kickoff Sunday, Germano posted on Facebook, urging skeptics to give the performer a chance.
“Open your minds and expand your horizons or next year they gonna have a polka band or David Hasselhoff LIVE at Super Bowl,” he wrote.
“Bar none his show at MainGate is one the proudest parts of our 45-year history,” Germano wrote in an earlier post. “I often wonder if Bad Bunny remembers one of his first sold-out shows in Allentown, PA.”
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Jai Smith is a lifetime Lehigh Valley resident on a mission to empower local underserved communities and inform the public while providing journalists and storytellers a platform to develop the next generation of news media.