Super Bowl LXI Heads to a Galaxy Far, Far Away With Star Wars Funday Football
Super Bowl LXI is headed to a galaxy far, far away. ESPN, Lucasfilm, Disney, and the NFL will present Star Wars Funday Football, a real-time animated alternate telecast of the big game set in the Star Wars universe, with original 1977 cast member Anthony Daniels returning to voice C-3PO.
What’s Happening
- Star Wars Funday Football streams live on Disney+ and the ESPN App and airs on Disney Channel and Disney XD on Sunday, February 14th, 2027.
- It’s the first animated alternate presentation of a Super Bowl, and part of ESPN’s first-ever Super Bowl production.
- Every play will be recreated in real time with players as animated avatars. Star Wars characters will sub in during key moments, and Easter eggs will appear throughout the game.
- Characters from across the Lucasfilm franchise will appear, including C-3PO voiced by Anthony Daniels.
- The animation is powered by Sony’s Beyond Sports, which combines NFL Next Gen Stats player tracking with Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations optical tracking.
- Visual settings, commentators, and more characters will be announced closer to the game.
- The telecast streams live in markets including Latin America, the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand, Canada (TSN+), the Netherlands, sub-Saharan Africa, Japan, Sweden, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.
- It will be available on demand on Disney+ shortly after the game in those markets plus the U.K., France, Germany, South Korea and others, for more than 155 markets in total.
Star Wars Comes to SC+ This Week
Starting Tuesday, October 20th, SC+, ESPN’s daily SportsCenter show on Disney+, will feature Star Wars “Hyperspace Highlights” that give Monday Night Football plays a Star Wars visual theme. Beginning October 26th, SC+ will also air a weekly segment on Mondays in which an animated Darth Vader interviews an NFL player from that night’s game.
Other Ways to Watch
The traditional telecast, with Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Lisa Salters and Laura Rutledge calling the game from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, airs on ESPN and ABC and streams on Disney+. A Spanish-language telecast will be available on Disney+ and ESPN Deportes, with a separate Spanish-language presentation on Univision. ESPN previously announced Super Bowl LXI with Peyton and Eli on ESPN2, Super Bowl LXI Field Pass with The Pat McAfee Show on ESPNU and Super Bowl LXI Playbook with Next Gen Stats on NFL Network.
The game also arrives during Lucasfilm’s celebration of 50 years of Star Wars. Five days later, on Friday, February 19, a newly restored version of the original 1977 Star Wars returns to theaters.