Joe Burrow is headed to Springfield. On Monday night, ESPN announced that an alternate telecast of its Dec. 9 Monday Night Football game featuring the Cincinnati Bengals and Dallas Cowboys will take place inside the universe of The Simpsons.
The Simpsons Funday Football stream will be available on Disney+ and ESPN+, recreating the real-world players as cartoon characters in real time. Bart and Homer Simpson will replace the characters at certain moments, while previously written skits incorporating Stephen A. Smith, Peyton Manning and others will appear in the telecast.
Drew Carter, Mina Kimes and Dan Orlovsky will call the animated version of the game, using VR headsets as part of the production. Hank Azaria, Nancy Cartwright, Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner and Yeardley Smith are lending their voices to the project as well. Simpsons creators have penned original content for the show.
ESPN used similar tech for its Toy Story-inspired broadcast of a Falcons-Jaguars game last season, which earned the company three Sports Emmy Awards and came in as Disney+’s most popular live event to date based on peak concurrent viewers.
This stream will also be viewable on mobile devices for fans with NFL+. The presentation will reach 145 markets internationally either live or as an on-demand replay.
Fans hoping to see the actual players in AT&T Stadium rather than Atoms Stadium can tune into a more traditional broadcast on ABC, ESPN and ESPN Deportes. The live-action Manning brothers will also be doing their typical Manningcast show on ESPN2.
Disney, which owns ESPN, acquired The Simpsons library and production as part of a $71 billion deal with Fox in 2019. The long-running cartoon has remained one of the most popular shows on Disney+ since the service’s launch.
