Super Bowl LXI gets a live animated Star Wars telecast, with Anthony Daniels back as C-3PO

Super Bowl LXI is getting an alternate telecast set in a galaxy far, far away. ESPN, Lucasfilm, Disney and the NFL announced Star Wars Funday Football on Monday, October 19: a live, animated version of the February 14, 2027, game at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. It will be the first animated presentation of a Super Bowl.

Every play will be recreated in real time: players turn into animated avatars, Star Wars characters sub in during key moments and Easter eggs show up throughout the game. Anthony Daniels, who has played C-3PO since the 1977 film, returns to voice the droid. ESPN says commentators, settings and more characters will be announced closer to the game.

Where to watch

In the US, the Star Wars version streams live on Disney+ and the ESPN App and airs on Disney Channel and Disney XD, alongside the traditional ESPN and ABC broadcast with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, which all US Disney+ subscribers can also stream. Internationally, it will air live in markets including Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada (on TSN+), Australia and Japan, and land on demand on Disney+ shortly after the game in places such as the UK, France and Germany, for more than 155 markets in total.

How we got here

This is the fourth animated NFL telecast from ESPN, Disney and the league. It started with Toy Story Funday Football in October 2023, which won three Sports Emmys, followed by The Simpsons in December 2024 and Monsters, Inc. in December 2025. The animation runs on player-tracking data from the NFL’s Next Gen Stats and Sony’s Hawk-Eye optical tracking, turned into animation by Sony’s Beyond Sports.

The game also marks ESPN’s first Super Bowl production, and it lands as Lucasfilm celebrates 50 years of Star Wars: five days later, on February 19, a newly restored version of the original 1977 film returns to theaters. Before that, starting October 20, ESPN’s SC+ show on Disney+ will run Star Wars-themed “Hyperspace Highlights” of Monday Night Football plays.