ESPN Announces Monsters Funday Football', Its Latest Real-Time Animated Broadcast, To Air Alongside Monday Night Football' on Dec. 8

ESPN Announces Monsters Funday Football', Its Latest Real-Time Animated Broadcast, To Air Alongside Monday Night Football' on Dec. 8ESPN, the NFL, Disney, and Pixar will partner on the third iteration of the alternative broadcastBy Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Monday, October 27, 2025 - 9:37 pm

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ESPN announced that the latest iteration of its live, real-time animated alternate broadcasts will be Monsters Funday Football, inspired by the popular Disney-Pixar film Monsters, Inc.

The production will take place on December 8 across ESPN2, Disney+, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and streaming via the new ESPN app and NFL+ as an alternate telecast of a Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Los Angeles Chargers.

The real-time production builds on the technical foundation established by last year's Simpsons Funday Football and 2023's Toy Story Funday Football.

This project, which was officially announced during halftime of this week's Monday Night Football telecast, is the latest product of ESPN's partnership with Sony's Beyond Sports and Hawk-Eye Innovations, which combines real-time NFL Next Gen Stats player and ball-tracking data with optical tracking to create live animation synced precisely to on-field action.

All of the plays from SoFi Stadium will be mirrored in a virtual recreation of the Monsters, Inc. factory, transforming real players into motion-enabled animated avatars and mixing them with movie characters like Mike Wazowski and James P. Sulley Sullivan. Yes, the original actors Billy Crystal and John Goodman will lend their voices to the characters in pre-recorded sound bites and even Chris Berman is expected to get the animated treatment with a special cameo segment.

Each iteration of Funday Football has pushed the boundary of what's possible in sports technology. By blending real-time NFL data and tracking with cutting-edge animation, we're transforming the way fans experience an NFL game, Michael Spike Szykowny, ESPN's VP, Graphics Innovation said in an official release announcing the event. Our continued innovation with partners like the NFL, Beyond Sports and Disney+ showcases how technology can turn a live game into a fully immersive world, giving fans an additional way to consume sports.

Beyond Sports' virtual recreation engine serves as the production's backbone, processing data at a millisecond level to render gameplay, character movement, and environmental details live. The workflow is similar to the one that earned Toy Story Funday Football three Sports Emmy Awards - including for George Wensel Technical Achievement - and it represents ESPN's continued commitment to next-generation presentation formats.

Calling the action from within the animated world will be ESPN's Drew Carter and Dan Orlovsky, appearing as virtual versions of themselves. Using Beyond Sports' Virtual Commentator Technology and VR headsets, the duo will experience the gameplay as if standing on the Cheer Floor, reacting live to the on-screen animation in sync with the real-world broadcast. The result is a multi-platform, fully immersive telecast designed to engage families and younger fans while showcasing ESPN's evolving data-visualization capabilities.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2025/10/27/espn-announces-monsters-funday-...
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