Funday Football is Back! ESPN Readies Animated Alternate NFL Broadcast Featuring The Simpsons on Dec. 9

Funday Football is Back! ESPN Readies Animated Alternate NFL Broadcast Featuring The Simpsons on Dec. 9 The Simpsons Funday Football will stream on Disney and ESPN alongside Bengals-CowboysMonday Night Football game By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Monday, October 28, 2024 - 9:48 pm

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On Monday night, ESPN unveiled plans for its next real-time animated alternate broadcast of an NFL game.

ESPN, Disney, and the National Football League will partner to stream The Simpsons Funday Football on Disney and ESPN alongside the Monday Night Football game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Dallas Cowboys on December 9.

The animated recreation of the game will be put together through a combination of tracking technology from NFL's Next Gen Stats and Sony's Beyond Sports, as well as optical tracking from Sony's Hawk-Eye Innovations. It's a follow-up to last year's similar alternate broadcast that featured Toy Story intellectual property. That show won three Sports Emmys earlier this year - Outstanding Production Design, the George Wensel Technical Achievement and Outstanding Graphic Design.

The fictitious Atoms Stadium will serve as the setting as each player on both the Bengals and Cowboys will be fully animated avatars. From there, Bart Simpson will play on the field as a member of the Bengals while Home Simpson joins the Cowboys. The rest of the Simpsons family as well as other characters will be involved, too. Marge and Lisa will interview players during the game and Maggie will fly the SkyCam.

Authentic The Simpsons voice actors will pre-record audio tracks to be used throughout the broadcast. Hank Azaria, Nancy Cartwright, Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, and Yeardley Smith will all lend their voices to the show. During last year's Toy Story edition of Funday Football, the SAG-AFTRA Strike which eliminated ESPN's ability to use any voice actors during the event. Additionally, The Simpsons writers and producers will also lend a hand in writing segments to be included in the show around the game action.

ESPN's Drew Carter will call the game alongside Mina Kimes and Dan Orlovsky.

The production will be available internationally in more than 145 markets live and/or via replay. All Latin America, Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sub-Saharan Africa and Canada (TSN) are all among those to receive it.

ESPN announced the alternate production during halftime of Monday night's game between the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Simpsons Funday Football alternate viewing presentation will stream on Disney and ESPN , and, on mobile, with NFL . The traditional Monday Night Football telecast will be available on ESPN, ABC and ESPN Deportes with Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli on ESPN2. Both the traditional telecast and Peyton and Eli will also be on ESPN , making each distinct presentation available in the ESPN App. All telecasts will begin at 8 p.m. ET.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2024/10/28/funday-football-is-back-espn-re...
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