Star Wars Funday Football: How ESPN’s Super Bowl LXI Alternate Cast Will Work

The animated presentation is scheduled for February 14, 2027

ESPN, Lucasfilm, Disney and the NFL announced Star Wars Funday Football on October 19. It is scheduled as an alternate presentation of Super Bowl LXI on Sunday, February 14, 2027. The date is for a future game; the announcement does not report an outcome.

ESPN calls this its first Super Bowl production and the first animated Funday Football version of the championship game. The event is scheduled less than four months after the October 19 announcement, so its announced format and plans may still be updated; no game result or audience response is yet known. The release does not set an exact kickoff time or name the animated broadcast commentators.

Every live play will be translated into an animated scene

ESPN says the alternate cast will recreate every Super Bowl play in real time inside the Star Wars setting. Instead of showing the actual players as the main visual feed, the production will turn them into animated avatars; Star Wars characters will sub in during key moments and visual Easter eggs will appear throughout. The underlying event remains the live NFL game; the presentation changes how its action is visualized for viewers.

That distinction is useful when choosing a feed. Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Lisa Salters and Laura Rutledge are scheduled for the conventional game presentation. Star Wars Funday Football shows the same plays at the same time but renders them through avatars and franchise elements; it is not a separate matchup or highlight package. The conventional feed is scheduled from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. The October 19 ESPN press release also links to a video for the Star Wars Funday Football project.

NFL tracking and Hawk-Eye provide separate inputs

ESPN identifies Sony’s Beyond Sports as its visualization partner. The announcement says the production will combine NFL Next Gen Stats with Sony Hawk-Eye optical tracking so live plays can be translated into animation. It does not list the exact data fields or latency viewers will see. ESPN says Beyond Sports has enabled the animated gameplay in the Funday Football series since it began.

The NFL describes its Next Gen Stats hardware as stadium receivers working with RFID tags in players’ shoulder pads. It measures position, speed, distance and acceleration ten times per second. Sony separately describes Hawk-Eye SkeleTRACK as using cameras and image analysis to locate athletes frame by frame and build a three-dimensional representation. These details explain the technology families ESPN names, but do not confirm the exact sensor configuration for this broadcast. NFL Football Operations Sony on Hawk-Eye

The NFL says each venue uses 20–30 ultra-wideband receivers, with RFID tags also placed on officials, the ball and game equipment. The league estimates about 250 devices per game and three operators; its baseline tracks every player on every play. Sony says SkeleTRACK tracks 29 body points. ESPN has not specified which of those details will be used or shown in this telecast.

The available channel depends on the viewer’s market

In the United States, the live Star Wars version is listed for Disney+, the ESPN App, Disney Channel and Disney XD. ESPN separately says the Spanish-language telecast will be on Disney+ and ESPN Deportes, with a separate Spanish-language presentation on Univision. ESPN says all U.S. Disney+ subscribers can watch the traditional game feed, while its broader Super Bowl coverage is planned for Disney+ in more than 55 international markets and ESPN networks in more than 130 countries. Those figures concern overall game coverage, not only the Star Wars alternate cast.

ESPN says the animated alternate cast will have expanded live availability in selected international markets, including Latin America, the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand, Canada through TSN+, the Netherlands, sub-Saharan Africa, Japan, Sweden, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Disney+ is also scheduled to offer the animated game on demand shortly after the live presentation in those and additional markets, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany and South Korea. The company says the plan reaches more than 155 markets worldwide; local listings will show which outlet carries it in a particular country. ESPN also lists other alternate programs: Peyton and Eli’s version on ESPN2, Pat McAfee’s Field Pass on ESPNU and a Next Gen Stats Playbook on NFL Network. These are separate broadcasts from Funday Football. In the U.S., ESPN, ABC and Disney+ will carry the traditional game telecast.

Anthony Daniels is confirmed to voice C-3PO

The press release confirms that Anthony Daniels will voice C-3PO, the character he has played since the 1977 Star Wars film. ESPN says other characters from across the franchise will join the action, especially at key moments, and that additional details about visual settings, commentators and characters will be announced closer to the game. The cast of animated guests is therefore only partly specified so far.

The LA Times notes that visual Easter eggs from Star Wars are part of the planned presentation. Its short report does not name additional guests; ESPN says details about other characters and settings will come closer to game day. LA Times

The Super Bowl version extends an existing alternate-cast series

Star Wars Funday Football is the fourth NFL animated alternate telecast from ESPN, Disney and the league. The earlier versions were Toy Story Funday Football in October 2023, built around the Falcons versus Jaguars game; The Simpsons Funday Football in December 2024 for Bengals versus Cowboys; and Monsters Funday Football in December 2025 for Eagles versus Chargers. The Toy Story edition earned three Sports Emmy Awards, according to ESPN. The Super Bowl version extends that format to America’s biggest game, which ESPN says will be its first Super Bowl production. ESPN also calls it the first animated alternate presentation of a Super Bowl.

The announcement also links the event to Lucasfilm’s fiftieth-anniversary year. ESPN says a newly restored version of the original 1977 Star Wars film is scheduled to return to theaters on February 19, five days after Super Bowl LXI. That is a separate anniversary release, not an announced segment of the football telecast.

The same ESPN release announced related programming around the main event. SC+, ESPN’s daily SportsCenter show on Disney+, began featuring Star Wars-themed “Hyperspace Highlights” from Monday Night Football on October 20. ESPN also scheduled an animated Darth Vader interview with an NFL player for Monday Night Football coverage starting October 26. These are separate promotional features, not part of the February alternate game feed.