The Simpsons Funday Football:: The Game May Be Set in Springfield, but the Production Team Is in Bristol ESPN's Studio Operations team is at the center of the animated altcast production By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Monday, December 9, 2024 - 3:18 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Although the real-life game will be in Dallas and the animated game will be in Springfield, nearly all production operations for tonight's The Simpsons Funday Football animated broadcast will be located at ESPN's home campus in Bristol, CT.
We not only have to tell the story of the football game but envision what that looks like if it were in The Simpsons universe, says Haili Menard, manager, technology operations, ESPN. Creative calls from our directing and production staff make that happen.
SVG goes behind the scenes in Springfield (and Bristol) with in-depth coverage of every aspect of the production:
TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW: Inside the Tech That ESPN and the NFL Use To Bring Springfield to Life
PRODUCTION OPERATIONS: The Game May Be Set in Springfield, but the Production Team Is in Bristol
CREATIVE PHILOSOPHY: ESPN Creative Studio's Michael Spike' Szykowny Pulls Back the Curtain on Creative Process
TRACKING TECHNOLOGY: Sony's Beyond Sports CEO Sander Shouten Analyzes How Tracking Tech Enables Real-Time Animated Altcasts
MUSIC & THEME SONG: ESPN Records Unique Twist on Monday Night Football Theme for Animated Alternative Broadcast
All Roads Lead to Bristol: Studio Operations Team To Handle the Live Game' ESPN Studio Operations team will essentially serve as the live game unit for tonight's broadcast, with all virtual cameras cut in Bristol. The majority of the crew producing the altcast, including the front bench and replay team, will be located in Bristol.
Live data tracking sent from onsite servers is used by gaming PCs to render the virtual environment. Essentially, data feeds are sent from the stadium, and ESPN's Studio Operations team puts everything together in Bristol - the only exception being the natural audio, which is mixed at the site before being sent to Bristol. ESPN will send live natural audio down its transmission paths to be tracked as well as adding sounds of the game from The Simpsons' universe.
For our team, says Mo McMeekin, studio operations manager, ESPN, this is an incredible and exciting production to be a part of. Creative storytelling and innovation are core values of our company; it's part of the ESPN culture of success. Having the opportunity to be scheduled for this unique production challenges our talented team to think about and deliver the most effective way to present this vision, along with an open space for calculated creative risks.
A crew of more than 40 will contribute to tonight's broadcast: announcers, graphics, production, directing staff, technical operators, edit team, full media replay team, and support staff. Included as well is the four-person Beyond Sports team, who traveled in from Netherlands this week.
Time is always our greatest challenge when producing these broadcasts, says director Jeff Nelson, a veteran of multiple ESPN animated broadcasts. The amount of work that goes into creating storylines, animating the environment and characters, roll-ins, specialty game animations, plus testing and rehearsals, is time-consuming, and a relatively small group is charged with these productions. That being said, it's our fourth animated broadcast, and we've learned a great deal, which has allowed us to skip the learning' stages of certain areas.
Inside the control room, Nelson's front bench and the rest of the production team must have a very different mindset from that for a traditional game production. Although the action on the field is certainly critical, integrating humor and fun into the broadcast is equally important.
One of the fun challenges for our team is stepping away from their experience of a traditional broadcast and getting their minds into the Simpsons universe, says McMeekin. While it may seem logical on a traditional broadcast to show a replay of what just happened during the game, it may make more sense during Funday Football to show Bart's or Homer's antics from the sidelines of Atoms Stadium.
Commentators Dialed-In: Calling the Atoms Stadium Action From Bristol Announcers Drew Carter, Dan Orlovsky, and Mina Kimes will be on hand in Bristol, calling the action from voiceover booths. They will wear Oculus Quest or Meta Quest Pro headsets, transported into the immersive graphic representation of the stadium, field, and players. ESPN is also deploying the Meta headsets for hand and facial tracking, which will allow the trio themselves to be animated within the broadcast.
[By having them wear] the headset, McMeekin explains, we will actually be able to see them in the virtual world, to the point where they can go on to the field and be amongst the players. That is super exciting.
ESPN has adjusted the workflow for announcers calling the action. Instead of being in a studio (as was the case for Toy Story Funday Football and Big City Greens Classic), ESPN isolates Kimes, Orlovsky, and Carter in new voiceover booths in Bristol.
The VO booths allow us to prevent talent from passing into each other's virtual space' without having to redesign our larger studios with pipe and drape, says Menard. The VO booths allow more-accurate game call' audio, talkback, and talent-preferred IFB mixing.
A bonus is that the technology-management staff has connectivity directly to the broadcast router, internet, multiviewers, etc. to provide a custom setup for talent and Beyond Sports support staff.
The use of our new VO booths is a great example of work smarter not harder, says Menard. We are better able
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
20/11/2025
CINCINNATI Oklahoma Community Television (OCT) has selected GatesAir and Triveni Digital as key technology partners in an ATSC 3.0 deployment that establishes a...
20/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has opened a wide-ranging inquiry into the relations between broadcast networks and their affiliates that could...
20/11/2025
NEW YORK Ad spend in the creator economy has more than doubled since 2021 from $13.9B to $29.5B in 2024 and that amount is projected to reach $37 billion in 202...
20/11/2025
Graduate Spotlight: Krysta Mirsik DePuy The educator from Hackettstown, New Jersey, shares how it took her 11 years to find the right graduate program for her...
20/11/2025
LONDON The winners of the Rise Awards 2025, which recognize women and companies whose achievements have stood out in the media technology industry, have been an...
20/11/2025
SANTA MONICA & NEW YORK Lionsgate's Worldwide Television Distribution Group and Debmar-Mercury have launched MovieSphere Gold in more than 30 million homes....
20/11/2025
ALAMEDA, Calif. Clear-Com has introduced its four-channel HelixNet beltpack, a next-generation advancement of its widely used two-channel model, and anticipates...
20/11/2025
NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J. Streaming technology and services provider Kiswe has launched Kiswe Core, a next-generation cloud-based platform designed to simplify the s...
20/11/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Dolby Laboratories has signed on as an official signature partner of the Bay Area Host Committee (BAHC) for the 2026 Super Bowl and the we...
20/11/2025
STUTTGART, Germany 3 Screen Solutions (3SS) has announced that the Canadian multiservice operator Telus has launched its Telus TV+ entertainment platform on Sam...
20/11/2025
Major League Baseball has announced deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix covering 2026-2028 that make ESPN the exclusive distributor for MLB.TV, put regula...
20/11/2025
Berklee Presents Holiday Extravaganza: Duke Ellingtons The Nutcracker Suite and ...
20/11/2025
It's the Late Late Toy Show BIG BIG Ticket Giveaway day!
It's the Late ...
20/11/2025
Editor's note: This post is part of Into the Omniverse, a series focused on how developers, 3D practitioners and enterprises can transform their workflows u...
20/11/2025
The How To Gael pocast gals, comedian Chris Kent and quizzer Darragh Ennis drop by for the fifth episode of The 2 Johnnies Late Night Lock In
In the penultimat...
20/11/2025
Tonight on RT Prime Time, Marie Crowe on how a Reading School changed her son&#...
20/11/2025
The NVIDIA Blackwell RTX upgrade is nearing the finish line, letting GeForce NOW Ultimate members across the globe experience true next-generation cloud gaming ...
20/11/2025
Tanya Berger-Wolf's first computational biology project started as a bet wit...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
The Simpsons Funday Football:: The Game May Be Set in Springfield, but the Production Team Is in Bristol ESPN's Studio Operations team is at the center of the animated altcast production By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S. 
