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The Simpsons has been on TV for 36 seasons, and later this year, it’s breaking into a brand-new genre.
On December 9, Homer Simpson and the gang will appear during The Simpsons Funday Football, a real-time animated NFL Monday Night Football game on Disney+ and ESPN+. The event follows last year’s Toy Story Funday Football, the company’s first-ever animated alternate NFL broadcast set in Toy Story character Andy’s room that brought in three Sports Emmys.
This year’s animated game will take place in the Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield at the fictional Atoms Stadium, with Bart Simpson joining the Cincinnati Bengals on the field, and Homer siding with the Dallas Cowboys. Meanwhile, Marge and Lisa Simpson will interview players during the game, while other characters will appear throughout the telecast.
To help make The Simpsons Funday Football come to life onscreen, the NFL will leverage one of its official technology partners, Sony. The telecast will use Sony’s Hawk-Eye tracking technology and its Beyond Sports visualization capabilities, and animated versions of ESPN NFL commentators will be present during the game to match the traditional telecast.
Like with Toy Story Funday Football, the real players will square off at a real football stadium and appear as themselves on the traditional telecast while also appearing in animated form on the alternate telecast, with plays and interactions happening on-field shown in real time on-screen.
Gametime decision: ESPN’s previous iteration of Funday Football, its first fully animated NFL telecast, represented an inventive addition to the growing trend of media companies looking to alternate telecasts to attract different audiences and create more ad inventory around lucrative sports programming. The Toy Story telecast, which featured a game between the Atlanta Falcons and Jacksonville Jaguars last October, ended up being the biggest live event to-date on Disney+, according to the company.
Earlier this year, CBS’s parent company Paramount made history by opting to air a SpongeBob SquarePants-themed alternate telecast of the Super Bowl on Nickelodeon to provide a more “kids and family-centric” version of the game.
There has been some brand involvement in alternate telecasts: Allstate participated in the Toy Story telecast as a sponsor, with football trivia questions from the company featured during breaks in the game. For the Simpsons telecast, no brand sponsorships have yet been announced, according to ESPN.
But if you’re into watching football the old-fashioned way, the traditional game will air on ESPN, ABC, ESPN+, and ESPN Deportes.