How Pixar, ESPN, the NFL, and Beyond Sports are Bringing Football and Fans to Monstropolis

Fans will once again step into a fully animated world on December 8, when Monday Night Football transforms into a brand-new Monsters, Inc.–themed alt-cast. At the 2025 ESPN Edge Conference, key creative and technical leaders from Pixar, ESPN, the NFL, and Beyond Sports lifted the curtain on how this groundbreaking broadcast comes to life.

Hosted by Michael “Spike” Szykowny (VP, Edit, Animation, Graphics Innovation & Creative Production, ESPN Creative Studio), the panel featured Jay Ward (Creative Director of Franchise, Pixar Animation Studios), Thommy Bouman (Business Development Lead, Beyond Sports), and Josh Helmrich (Senior Director, Media Strategy, Business Development & Next Gen Stats, NFL).

Together, they traced the evolution of animated sports broadcasts — from early experiments with raw player-tracking dots to the fully realized Pixar worlds fans will experience this winter.

Josh Helmrich opened by explaining how the NFL’s transformation from traditional stats to live positional tracking laid the foundation for animated games. “Once we had devices on players and in the football, we knew the data could power much more than coaching and scouting,” he said. “One of our key goals was always to create new media experiences for fans.”

Those early data tests were simple: player locations on a field, updated in real time. But even that was enough to inspire Beyond Sports to build early prototypes showing how live action could be visualized in a fully digital world. Thommy Bouman recalled the infancy of the technology: “We didn’t know how to do everything yet. We had tracking data telling us where players were, and we animated on top of it. It was charming — very simple — but fans immediately became engaged. That’s when we realized we had something bigger than analysis.” These blockhead prototypes proved an animated broadcast was possible, but a lot of work remained to make the concept worthy of Disney’s iconic franchises.

The growth of the alt-cast concept accelerated when two different technologies came together: wearable tracking inside players’ shoulder pads and optical tracking from Hawkeye, capturing 29 body-movement points. Bouman described the combination as the secret sauce: “Wearables give you stable, continuous data. Optical gives you finesse and detailed motion. Together, you get the best of both worlds.” The marriage of the two is particularly important in football, where players often obstruct one another.

With the technology leveling up, ESPN and Pixar turned to a beloved location for this year’s broadcast: Monstropolis. Unlike other alt-casts, this broadcast — like every Pixar project — started with a story. As fans know, the monsters discovered that humans are not toxic, and that laughter is more powerful than screams. With this knowledge, they decided to transform one of their Laugh Floors into a Cheer Floor.

Jay Ward shared that each sports venue gets its own signature “exclusive club,” and for Monsters, Inc., they created something entirely new: “We built the Canister Club — a place where monsters hang out. You’ll see scream canisters filling up in real time. It’s this fun hub that anchors the world of the broadcast.”

Translating human NFL players into that world posed a creative question. Should the players get horns? Fur? Tentacles? Ward explained the final decision: “Our first instinct was to make them monster-fied. But the NFL said: that’s not who they are. So the players stay human — and the world adapts around them. It’s the best way to respect everyone’s IP.”

The ESPN Creative Studio team then adapted Pixar’s model kits to make Mike, Sulley, and Roz feel right at home in a live game environment — slightly stylized, but unmistakably on-model. And they won’t just look like themselves; they’ll sound like themselves too, with Billy Crystal (Mike), John Goodman (Sulley), and Bob Peterson (Roz) all returning to voice their characters.

During the broadcast, Roz becomes a sideline reporter — interacting directly with real NFL players, who were thrilled to join the fun. “These players grew up with Monsters, Inc., just like they grew up with Toy Story,” Szykowny said. “They love being part of it.”

One of the highlight sequences previewed at the conference was a halftime showdown between Mike and Sulley: the Scream Canister Challenge. But the festivities also revealed how the collaboration between Pixar and ESPN elevated the original idea. The first animatic showed Mike wearing a parachute as he glided down to the field — but Pixar had questions. Ward laughed, “Why would Mike wear a parachute? It didn’t make sense. So we gave him a helmet. The helmet follows him up and falls back down with him — it works perfectly, and it’s funnier.” The preview animatic got big laughs, particularly when Mike misses the target and face-plants — classic Wazowski.

The session closed with a montage of past alt-casts — from early blockhead characters to last year’s Toy Story telecast — showing just how far the technology has come.

With full optical coverage, returning Pixar icons, and one of the most vibrant worlds in the Pixar library, the Monsters, Inc. Monday Night Football alt-cast on December 8 is shaping up to be the most ambitious animated sports broadcast yet. And for one night only, Monstropolis becomes the most colorful field in football.

But don’t worry: thanks to ESPN’s expanded deal with Beyond Sports, many more animated telecasts are on the horizon — including the return of Dunk the Halls on Christmas Day. With their franchise appeal and presence on Disney+, these animated broadcasts have a unique way of introducing new fans to sports. As Walt Disney often said, parents and children should be able to have fun together — and these broadcasts give families an opportunity to watch the game, laugh together, and maybe even begin new traditions of their own.