The National Football League confirmed Monday that the demonstrator who raised a Palestinian flag, along with a Sudanese flag, and ran onto the field during Kendrick Lamar's halftime performance at yesterday's Super Bowl was actually a member of the American rapper's 400-person dance ensemble – not an unauthorized intruder at the event.
"We commend the security personnel who detained the individual carrying the flag," an official statement from America's premier football league. "None of the production staff was aware of this individual's intentions, the individual will (be) banned for life from all NFL stadiums and events." The announcement further detailed that the individual, whose identity remains undisclosed, "hid the item and unveiled it late in the show."
Simultaneously, Roc Nation, the production company owned by Jay-Z, released a parallel statement emphasizing its lack of prior knowledge about the incident and asserting that it "was neither planned nor part of the production and was never in any rehearsal." However, the New Orleans Police Department, where the Super Bowl was hosted, announced today that although the man was removed from the stadium, he was neither arrested nor summoned for future questioning.
Apple, the performance's sponsor, has not yet addressed American media inquiries regarding the disruptive incident, which took place during "TV off," the closing number of Lamar's spectacular performance.
The Super Bowl game and its halftime show drew a live audience exceeding 100 million viewers in the United States and was broadcast across dozens of nations globally, including Israel.
