The Simpsons Funday Football: Inside the Tech That ESPN and the NFL Use To Bring Springfield to Life The alternative broadcast relies on Sony's Beyond Sports tech and Hawk-Eye data By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Monday, December 9, 2024 - 3:24 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The world of alternative broadcasts is expanding once again. Tonight, ESPN will roll out The Simpsons Funday Football on ESPN2, Disney+, ESPN+, and NFL+ (mobile). 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 (FULL STORY BELOW)
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
Altcast Sophistication Illustrates Evolution of Animated Broadcasts The Simpsons Funday Football not only promises to be filled with more humor and schtick than previous alternative broadcasts but also demonstrates how quickly the technology is evolving to power such broadcasts.
I think this is the most alternate of the alternate broadcasts, says Phil Orlins, VP, production, ESPN. To me, this is the true alternative because we're not just treating the game or wrapping it with an alteration. We're actually re-creating the game in a truly alternative universe. By design, we're explicitly pursuing the interest of fans who may not want to watch the game in the conventional manner, and I think that is really important.
Tonight's broadcast involves creative elements representing everything from the Simpsons writing staff to the ESPN graphics team, which continues to get more and more reps with such broadcasts. Those creative elements make use of some key technology pieces that make it all possible and, increasingly, allow the. shows to become even more sophisticated.
Explains Josh Helmrich, senior director, media strategy, business development and Next Gen Stats, NFL, We always had this vision when we started player-involved tracking, which is what we call the Next Gen Stats platform, to create benefits for the entire ecosystem of the NFL. One of those is bringing new experiences to our fans and creating more engaging content. With the Beyond Sports team and Hawk-Eye data, we've been able to take it to the next level. The more creative and engaging content we can create, the better. We continue to grow, thanks to great partners like ESPN and Beyond Sports.
According to Orlins, the constant and rapid progress with the technology that started with single-point tracking just a couple of years ago and relatively basic movements has evolved to blended tracking, which is single-point NGS tracking combined with the Hawk-Eye tracking. He credits Sony's Beyond Sports co-founder/Chief Technology Officer Nicolaas Westerhof and his team with taking the alternative broadcast to new heights.
Our 3-D simulation is based, first, on positional tracking data, explains Westerhof. We have two sources coming together. The single-point tracking data provided by Next Gen Stats relies on trackers in the shoulder pads of the player and gives us a very stable feed of the position of the player.
The secondary source, he notes, is optical tracking that provides skeletal data from 29 points on each player's body and limbs. The secret sauce provided by Beyond Sports is to combine the two sets of data in an accurate way.
It allows us to get a lot closer to the actual players' movement and give the [animated characters] detailed movement, Westerhof explains. It's a little less stable than the single-point tracking, but, when it works, you want to use it as much as possible because it provides the detail.
Tonight's effort takes things to yet another height. Characters like Lisa Simpson, for example, will not be as tall as Dallas Cowboys wide receiver CeeDee Lamb. So, when the Beyond Sports system tracks a ball thrown to a real-world 6-foot-2 receiver but the shorter Lisa Simpson animated character is what the viewer sees, the Beyond Sports system needs to adjust the flight of the ball so that it lands in the hands of Lisa Simpson.
With data processing, says Westerhof, we can take the ball and make it go exactly into her hands. That is difficult to do, especially in real time, and a whole bunch of different processes are going on in the background on our side, mostly machine-learning processes, to make that happen. It needs to be adjusted on the fly as we don't know beforehand what character is going to be in what play. We spent a lot of time on making the system as flexible as possible, because we don't know what's going to happen.
The advances in Hawk-Eye have been driven by a broad technical partnership between Sony and the NFL that began in the summer and is being expanded to other aspects of the NFL's business. This alternate broadcast is a good example of [that expansion], from a Hawk-Eye perspective, says Sony Chief Commercial Officer Michael Markovich. The more data we capture, the better it gets, and we can deliver more use cases from it. As this data gets better and the systems get better and we have more reps and trials, obviously, we get to do things like the Simpsons game and the Toy Story game and, hopefully, even more serialized or episodic media content.
He also sees a role for this sort of data in officiating: Our number-one focus on the Hawk-Eye side is to use the optical trac
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
The Simpsons Funday Football: Inside the Tech That ESPN and the NFL Use To Bring Springfield to Life The alternative broadcast relies on Sony's Beyond Sports tech and Hawk-Eye data By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
