A first for the big game: the Super Bowl gets an animated alternative telecast set in the Star Wars universe.
Disney, Lucasfilm, ESPN and the NFL will air an animated Star Wars telecast of Super Bowl LXI on Sunday, February 14. It will run alongside the traditional broadcast from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, with Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Lisa Salters and Laura Rutledge on ESPN, ABC and Disney+.
Star Wars Funday Football will recreate every play of the game in real time, turning the players on the field into animated avatars. Characters from the franchise will sub in at key moments, and Easter eggs will turn up throughout the broadcast. This marks the initial time a Super Bowl has had an animated alternate broadcast.
C-3PO, a mainstay of the Star Wars movies from Lucasfilm, will play a significant role. Anthony Daniels, who originally played the character, will voice him. Disney's stance is that further specifics, including on-screen visuals, the commentary team and the cast of characters, are expected to be revealed over the coming weeks.
The altcast will air on Disney+, Disney Channel, Disney XD and the ESPN app. Live streams will be available across the Caribbean, Latin America and the US, plus Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sweden, the Netherlands and sub-Saharan Africa; in Canada, it streams on TSN+. Other regions will get the broadcast soon after the final whistle.
Star Wars is also coming to the regular season. From Tuesday, October 20, SC+, ESPN's daily SportsCenter show on Disney+, will feature Hyperspace Highlights, plays from Monday Night Football with a Star Wars visual theme. From October 26, SC+ will also show an animated Darth Vader interviewing a player in that night's Monday Night Football game.
Disney calls its animated altcasts Funday Football. Earlier editions featured Toy Story (October 2023), The Simpsons (December 2024) and Monsters Inc (December 2025). Those ran alongside regular-season games, not the biggest broadcast of the year.
The game will have several other telecasts. Earlier this month Disney tapped host Pat McAfee to anchor Field Pass, a commentary-driven option that will play alongside the traditional broadcast on ABC and ESPN. A Super Bowl version of the ManningCast, featuring Peyton and Eli Manning, will air on ESPN2. Playbook, a statistics-focused telecast led by a team still to be announced, will air on NFL Network, and a Spanish-language telecast will air on ESPN Deportes.
Five days after the Super Bowl, Lucasfilm will mark 50 years of the franchise by putting a restored version of the original 1977 film into cinemas, starting Friday, February 19.
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