A promo image for a "The Simpsons" alternate MNF broadcast on Dec. 9, 2024. A promo image for a “The Simpsons” alternate MNF broadcast on Dec. 9, 2024. (ESPN.)
DisneyESPNNFLOriginalsPop CultureBy Andrew Bucholtz on

Alternate broadcasts in general are quite well-established at this point, but they’re certainly not all the same, and they’re certainly not always easy to do. Each type of those alternate broadcasts comes with particular hurdles. For ESPN, perhaps the most challenging one they’ve done to date is their The Simpsons Funday Football for this week’s Monday Night Football clash between the Cincinnati Bengals and Dallas Cowboys.

AA attended a conference call on this ESPN+/Disney+ alternate broadcast last week. That saw executives from ESPN, the NFL, The Simpsons, and Beyond Sports (a Sony-owned company playing a key role in the technology translating player movements on the field and commentator movements in the booth into this 3D-animated broadcast) speak to media about what’s going into this alternate broadcast and what to expect from it.

To start with, while this broadcast was officially announced in October, ESPN executive vice president (league programming and acquisitions) Ros Durant said it’s been in the works for almost a full year. Durant said this started with an idea from vice-president (programming) Tim Reed and went into intense planning in early 2024, and said it builds on ESPN’s previous alternate broadcasts (including the ManningCast, also available for this game on ESPN2 and ESPN+ and featuring guests Cris Collinsworth and John Legend, and last year’s animated Toy Story Funday Football) and hits even a potential wider audience due to the multi-generational appeal of The Simpsons.

“The Simpsons resonate with fans all around the globe, young and old, and everyone in between,” Durant said. “Audience expansion is a top priority for us at ESPN, and I know it’s a top priority for the NFL, and this is one distinctly Disney way that we’re doing that. It brings together some of the strongest, most iconic brands—ESPN, Disney, NFL, The Simpsons, Sony—all in service of the fan.”

Reed said part of the selection of The Simpsons here came from this being a Monday primetime altcast rather than an early-Sunday international window one.

“One of the filters we use in terms of thinking about which IPs to take a look at, the fact this game was in prime time was a big driver of that,” he said. “Last year we did Toy Story at 9:30 in the morning. I think part of that filter was knowing we were in prime time, we’d go a little bit older.

Reed said he thinks The Simpsons is interesting to a wide range of demographics.

“Clearly it’s multi-generational. I’m a perfect example. I’m a die-hard Simpsons fan. I have been that way my whole life. I have 13- and 15-year-old boys who have been binge-watching all 35 episodes — 35 years of The Simpsons on Disney+. Granted, they’re a focus group of two, but again, this is something we’re definitely going to enjoy together. So, again, I think that’s part of how we landed on The Simpsons and why this can work this time.”

That’s a big part of the appeal of this for the NFL as well. NFL Media executive vice president and chief operating officer Hans Schroeder said The Simpsons resonated with them as a potential fit for a NFL alternate broadcast due to the amount of fans of the show across demographics and countries (which matters for this broadcast, which will be available in more than 100 countries on those Disney streaming platforms).

“We are incredibly excited about Monday night and the opportunity we have collectively with all the parties that have come together here to create the Simpsons Funday Football,” Schroeder said. “You know, for us at the NFL — and Ros hit on some of these similar and common themes — we’re very focused about how we continue to innovate and create new experiences for our fans. New experiences that extend across screens and across new platforms, areas like Disney+ here.

“Opportunities to create more expansion globally in the number of 100-plus countries we’ll be in around the world, as we bring this type of opportunity to engage with the NFL in a different way to our fans everywhere that they are and in new ways, are incredibly exciting to us. And then in a new content format, using The Simpsons in an animated way. And all the iconic history, all the fandom that The Simpsons have, certainly here in the U.S. but also globally. They’re truly a global franchise.

“So you bring those elements together, and for us what makes it so exciting is to bring those ingredients in a new way and tell the story of an NFL game in an entirely new and different way.”

Meanwhile, Simpsons showrunner Matt Selman said this is a great opportunity for that franchise to connect with new and existing fans in a different way, especially with their voice talent on board recording new segments for this broadcast.

“The fact that we have all the actual Simpsons voices to create original animation and content, Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, and Hank Azaria — to have them on board to give this Simpsons reality and Simpsons authenticity, we couldn’t have done it without them,” he said. “Our voice talent is always excited to do these fun, new projects. Whether it’s a theme park ride or an NFL alt-cast, they know that the lifeblood of The Simpsons is replicating itself in whatever new technology comes along.

“So I just want to thank our cast for being so up for the fun of this that Spike [ESPN vice president edit and animation Michael “Spike” Szykowny] and his team — I mean, Spike and Sparky, as you can imagine, came into this with a huge energy of just fun and excitement and possibility and not wanting to limit ourselves. And just how can we be as creative and how can we be as Simpsony and how can we be as subversive and have as much fun as possible given the extreme budgetary and time restrictions we were under?

“Subversive” is a word that hasn’t always been heavily used around the NFL, with the league sometimes criticized for lacking a sense of humor. However, there have been some changes there over the years. The last half-decade has seen teams delve into funnier social media presences, whether with schedule release videos or outright trolling. And the league-owned NFL Network has proven willing to offer many more jokes over that span, both beyond and (especially) on Good Morning Football. And Selman said the league was “unbelievably cool” with what the Simpsons team wanted to do, which will stand out from your typical NFL broadcast.

“We didn’t go maximum edgy for this, right? It’s not maximum edge, but there is a sense of playfulness and spoofiness of the NFL—that the NFL was unbelievably cool with—where we’re having fun with the tropes of football and the cliches of football and making fun of the family-watching football experience in a way that these other shows wouldn’t really be able to do because they’re not— they don’t have satirical DNA.”

In conversation with Syzkowny, Selman said a lot of the writing work here came from Joel Cohen, a veteran Simpsons writer and noted sports fan.

“We got to give a shout out, Spike, to Joel Cohen, the long-time Simpsons writer and super sports fan who did so much of the writing for this thing. And really — you know, if Spike sent Joel an e-mail in the middle of the night saying we need 50 questions that Marge can ask to football players that won’t offend the NFL, Joel would write 100. It was really great.”

It helps on the writing side too that the specific game involved was chosen early on, and wasn’t flexed out (due to this alternate broadcast) even when the Cowboys and Bengals put up underwhelming records. Schroeder said that matchup made a lot of sense for the NFL to spotlight.

“From our view, this is one of the sort of the real big tentpole games on the Monday Night Football calendar, with where the Bengals and Joe Burrow have been, and with Dallas and the franchise that they have,” he said. “I think the creative talent in here would tell a story about—no matter what two teams played, would find great stories and narratives to play. But this year, particularly this matchup and sort of how it translated back to The Simpsons and being such a tentpole game on the overall Monday night calendar, was one I think we circled as having a lot of excitement around it.”

Selman said this matchup was a natural fit for Homer and Bart Simpson as well.

“We were so lucky to be given the Cowboys versus the Bengals, who are just two iconic teams with great identities and great fan bases,” he said. “We were just so lucky also that the Cowboys are sort of like a Homer Simpson-type team, American team.

“And [Dallas head coach] Mike McCarthy might be a Homer-type guy, one might imagine. And then you have Joe Burrow on the other side who is a cool young, spiky-haired, blonde bad boy — he’s like Bart. And that fits our character archetypes so perfectly.

If Homer is mad at Bart and has a hot dog dream while watching Monday Night Football, and then it’s basically McCarthy versus Burrow, Homer versus Bart, and that’s the simple father versus son strangling, Homer strangling Bart, dynamic that has been part of the show for 35 years.

“I don’t know if that would have worked as well if it was like Titans versus Jacksonville. We would have found something. We would have made it work.”

As noted by Selman there, the broadcast here will start with Homer eating too many hot dogs and having a fever dream. That dream will see him, Bart, and other Springfield residents playing in a football game, with Homer on the Dallas side and Bart on the Cincinnati side. Selman said the hot dog fever dream feels appropriate for how wild an idea this is and how supportive all the partners have been.

“The NFL and ESPN and Spike and everyone has allowed this crazy hot dog fever dream to happen, and all the ESPN talent that gave themselves, their time, including one very special spoiler guy that I will not mention — or girl. I just can’t wait to see people’s reaction.”

Read on for more on the ESPN talent involved, how animation will place them in the game, and why this broadcast stands out amongst alternate broadcasts.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

View all posts by Andrew Bucholtz