After throwing characters from Marvel and Toy Story into its ongoing battle to lure younger viewers to its more and more costly sports activities TV lineup, Disney ESPN is certainly bringing in massive names.
Characters from the long-running animated sequence “The Simpsons” will participate within the animated “Alternate Solid” sport between the Cincinnati Bengals and Dallas Cowboys on December 9, which is able to stream on Disney+, ESPN+ and NFL+, whereas the standard The published will probably be simulcast on ESPN. Within the child’s model of the sport, Bart Simpson generally performs for the Bengals, his father Homer performs for the Cowboys, and sister Lisa and mom Maggie interview gamers whereas child Maggie operates the sky digicam.
Longtime “The Simpsons” voice actors Hank Azaria, Nancy Cartwright, Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner and Yeardley Smith will carry out within the pre-recorded Voiced a number of of their characters in clips and sketches.
ESPN has been experimenting with ideas for years that they hope will enable youthful viewers who would not usually watch main league sports activities to see a model of the sport designed particularly for them. The explanation for that is quite simple. Though the league’s video games are more and more distributed by a wider vary of media companions, the league remains to be wanting to develop its viewers. On the similar time, networks have gotten extra conscious of the sky-high royalties they pay for video games and are shifting extra of their programming stock towards content material related to them.
Paramount Worldwide aired Tremendous Bowl LLVIII completely on kid-focused Nickelodeon earlier this 12 months, full with its personal sportscasters, some separate TV spots and the community’s signature inexperienced slime. In the meantime, Disney and ESPN aired an NHL sport utilizing animated characters from Massive Metropolis and are testing a sport utilizing Marvel characters in 2021 the place youngsters can watch the Golden State Warriors This sport is performed throughout an NBA match between the Warriors and New Orleans Pelicans. Final 12 months, an animated model of the Sunday morning sport between the Atlanta Falcons and Jacksonville Jaguars that aired at London’s Wembley Stadium used Toy Story characters reminiscent of Woody, Buzz, Poppy, Bullseye and Stretchy canine.
Regardless of the animation, The Simpsons will nonetheless have stay matches. Utilizing monitoring expertise, gamers within the cartoon model of the sport will mimic each motion from the real-life Bengals and Cowboys video games — simply as they might have occurred.
The sport may also have a whole lot of different customization content material. An animated model of ESPN’s Mina Kimes and Dan Orlovsky will present dialogue, whereas Drew Carter will reasonable the sport. The producers of “The Simpsons” have written unique vignettes that will probably be used earlier than, throughout and after the occasion, in addition to the sequence’ well-liked theme music and a few jingles. Animated clips from Stephen A. Smith, Peyton and Eli Manning may also be used.
Disney’s willingness to lend a few of its best-known properties to NFL providers might assist clarify why NFL officers granted the leisure big the inexperienced gentle to simulcast extra “Monday Night time Soccer” video games on ABC for the second consecutive season. They need to usually broadcast extra “Monday Night time Soccer” video games on ABC.
