Disney Will Simulcast the 2027 Super Bowl as a Live Animated Star Wars Broadcast

Disney and the NFL have confirmed that Super Bowl LXI will get a second life as an animated, Star Wars-themed broadcast airing alongside the actual game on February 14, 2027. The alternate telecast, called "Star Wars Funday Football," will stream on Disney+ and the ESPN App and air on Disney Channel and Disney XD, according to the announcement.

The broadcast will pull in characters from "across the Lucasfilm franchise," per the companies, with Anthony Daniels specifically confirmed to reprise his role voicing C-3PO. Disney describes the project as a way to give "fans of all ages a new way to experience ESPN's first-ever Super Bowl production."

This isn't Disney's first swing at this format, just its first animated one. Star Wars Funday Football is actually the fourth alternate Super Bowl broadcast from the ESPN-Disney-NFL partnership, following Toy Story Funday Football in 2023 (which won a Sports Emmy), The Simpsons Funday Football in 2024, and Monsters Funday Football in 2025. What sets this one apart is that it's the first to render the game in full animation rather than overlaying characters on more conventional broadcast elements.

The technical engine behind it is "data visualization technology" from Sony's Beyond Sports, which takes real-time player tracking data from the live game and converts it into animated movement as the action happens. In practice, that means every real throw, tackle, and touchdown gets mirrored by animated Star Wars characters moving in sync, live, for the full three-hour broadcast. The effect, as IGN's reporting put it, ends up looking something like a licensed mobile game, except the outcome is dictated by actual NFL athletes rather than a joystick.

The timing isn't incidental. 2027 marks the 50th anniversary of Star Wars, and the animated broadcast will air just five days before a newly restored version of the original 1977 film returns to theaters on February 19, 2027. Disney has clearly built the Super Bowl stunt into a broader anniversary push rather than treating it as a standalone novelty.

For Disney, these Funday Football broadcasts have become a reliable way to stretch the value of its NFL rights deal across its full portfolio of franchises, turning one broadcast into a multi-platform event that reaches younger viewers who might not otherwise sit through three hours of football. Doing it with Star Wars, and doing it fully animated for the first time, raises the production bar for whatever franchise gets the treatment next.