There’s a strange kind of job security in being the person a league calls when it needs someone reliable to nail “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of eighty thousand people and a hundred million more watching from home. A handful of performers have built something close to a second career out of it, moving from football stadiums to basketball arenas to baseball diamonds without missing a beat. Some became famous for it. Others simply kept getting asked back, year after year, sport after sport.
Jennifer Hudson
Jennifer Hudson’s résumé of sporting appearances reads almost like a tour of American sports itself. Hudson received widespread praise after performing the anthem before Super Bowl XLIII in 2009. That performance alone would have been enough to define most careers, but it turned out to be the opening act. She returned to the Super Bowl stage in 2013, joining the Sandy Hook Elementary chorus for a rendition of America the Beautiful during the pregame show.
From there, Hudson kept crossing sports lines that few singers ever get invited to cross. The NBA announced that Jennifer Hudson would perform a special tribute to the late Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and their seven friends, opening the night ahead of player introductions for the 69th NBA All-Star Game. She was back at NBA All-Star in 2024, this time headlining the halftime show itself. In 2026, the range widened even further when she sang America the Beautiful at the MLB All-Star Game in Philadelphia just days before performing the National Anthem at the 2026 FIFA World Cup Final at MetLife Stadium, giving her a claim to the NFL, NBA, MLB and international soccer’s biggest stage all within one remarkable stretch of her career.
Carrie Underwood
Carrie Underwood’s connection to sports isn’t built on a single anthem moment but on sheer repetition, week after week, for over a decade. The American Idol alum first became the musical face of Sunday Night Football in 2013, a station she’s held ever since. That means she opens NFL primetime games more often in a single season than most anthem singers do in an entire career.
The scale of that commitment is easy to overlook because it happens so regularly it barely registers as news anymore. Carrie Underwood and NBC Sports announced she’s returning for her 14th year as the star of Sunday Night Football’s iconic show open, once again performing “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night.” Whether or not it counts as a traditional anthem, it functions as one for millions of football fans, and it’s arguably given her more total sporting-event airtime than any other singer on this list.
Luke Bryan
Luke Bryan’s path to becoming a fixture at sporting events started with an embarrassing moment rather than a triumphant one. Bryan had previously given a poorly-received performance of the anthem at the MLB All-Star Game in 2012, which caused a giant controversy online when fans criticized the singer for reading the lyrics to the anthem off his hand while he sang. Rather than shy away from big stages, he used the experience as motivation, and five years later he was handed the Super Bowl.
Bryan performed the national anthem before the New England Patriots took on the Atlanta Falcons at Super Bowl LI, becoming the first man to sing it at the Super Bowl since Billy Joel in 2007. His sporting event résumé didn’t stop there. This wasn’t Luke Bryan’s first time singing the National Anthem at a Predators game, having previously performed at games in 2017 and 2020, and he was back on the ice again at the Nashville Predators game on February 4, 2026, giving him a steady presence across the NFL, MLB and NHL alike.
Mickey Guyton
Mickey Guyton has quietly become one of the industry’s most trusted names for exactly the kind of situation that keeps league officials up at night. The knowledge of who’s a proven performer comes in handy when singers are needed on short notice, such as when a best-of-seven playoff series goes beyond four games, and during a recent NBA Finals, Guyton was put on hold for a week and confirmed to sing for Game 5 once Game 4 was over. That kind of last-minute reliability doesn’t happen by accident.
Her track record explains why leagues keep her number handy. Guyton was a known quantity, having sung the National Anthem at the 2022 Super Bowl and other sporting events. Few singers manage to be trusted with both the NFL’s biggest stage and the unpredictable scheduling demands of the NBA playoffs, but Guyton has quietly built a reputation for showing up and delivering regardless of the circumstances.
Fergie
Fergie’s sporting event history includes both a genuine Super Bowl milestone and one of the most talked about anthem performances in recent memory. During Super Bowl XLV, the halftime show was performed by the Black Eyed Peas, featuring lead singer Fergie, putting her name alongside the biggest football stage in the country. That alone secured her a permanent line in Super Bowl history.
Seven years later, she returned to the sports spotlight in a very different way. Fergie sang the national anthem before the 2018 NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles, a performance that became instantly memorable, if not entirely for the reasons she intended. The Grammy-winning singer later said she’d always been honored and proud to perform the national anthem and wanted to try something special for the NBA, admitting the slow, bluesy rendition didn’t strike the intended tone. Whatever the reaction, the appearance cemented her spot among performers who’ve taken the mic at both football’s biggest night and basketball’s midseason showcase.
Taken together, these five performers show just how far a singer’s reach can extend once a league decides they can be trusted with the moment before kickoff or tip off. Some built that trust through consistency, others through sheer versatility across sports that rarely overlap on a single résumé. Either way, the next time an anthem or a familiar theme song opens a broadcast, there’s a decent chance one of these names is behind the microphone.
