NBC’s Super Bowl LX coverage won’t include an altcast, and that’s a good thing

Here’s what you won’t see during Super Bowl LX on Feb. 8: SpongeBob SquarePants explaining the nuances of the new kickoff rules to children who stopped paying attention 20 minutes ago. A digital Homer Simpson running alongside Jaxon Smith-Njigba in a computer-generated Dreamworks hellscape. Peyton and Eli Manning are sitting on their couches, trying to stretch 60 minutes of material across three and a half hours of game time.

What you will see is Mike Tirico calling the game, Cris Collinsworth breaking down the action, Melissa Stark, and Kaylee Hartung reporting from the sideline. And that’s because NBC isn’t doing an alternate broadcast of the Super Bowl in 2026, making it the second network in a row to skip the whole thing after Fox did the same last year.

And for once, a network is getting it right.

ESPN created the ManningCast in 2021, and it was legitimately great TV. Peyton and Eli Manning in their respective man caves, riffing on football, telling stories from their playing days, bringing on guests who actually wanted to be there. It worked because the Mannings are funny and insightful, and the format let them be themselves in ways traditional broadcasts never could. The show drew about a million viewers per episode, which sounds modest until you remember those viewers specifically chose to watch Peyton and Eli instead of the main broadcast.

Networks looked at the success of the ManningCast and learned exactly the wrong lesson. They decided people wanted alternatives, when what people actually wanted was the Manning brothers. So we got a deluge of IP-driven altcasts that had nothing to do with finding compelling hosts and everything to do with leveraging corporate synergies. Disney owns ESPN and also owns every piece of IP humans have created in the last century, so we got Mickey Mouse calling an NBA game on Christmas. We got a Simpsons-themed Monday Night Football broadcast. We got Toy Story NFL. We got Big City Greens NHL. NBC did a Madden-themed Sunday Night Football presentation. CBS put SpongeBob and Patrick on Nickelodeon for five NFL broadcasts.

The technical wizardry behind these broadcasts is genuinely impressive. Figuring out how to transpose live action into animation in real-time requires serious engineering and serious money. But nobody stopped to ask the more important question: Who is this for?

Ask the networks, and they’ll tell you these altcasts attract younger audiences. Maybe that’s true anecdotally. You can find plenty of examples on social media of parents watching the Nickelodeon broadcast with their kids, enjoying the slime cannons and the simplified explanations. But the actual viewership data tells a different story, and it’s not a story about building the next generation of sports fans.

Nickelodeon’s NFL broadcasts offer the clearest case study because they’ve been running longer than any other IP altcast. The debut in January 2021 — a Bears-Saints Wild Card game — drew 2.1 million viewers. That felt like affirmation. Network executives saw those numbers and probably started calculating how many kids they could convert into lifelong NFL fans. Then came reality. A 49ers-Cowboys Wild Card game the next year averaged 1.3 million viewers. Christmas 2023’s Broncos-Rams game drew 900,000. Christmas 2024’s Raiders-Chiefs hit 900,000 again. 2024’s Super Bowl LVIII between the 49ers and Chiefs — the biggest game of the year with two of the most exciting teams and the highest possible stakes — barely cracked one million at 1.2 million viewers.

As the number of altcasts increased, interest in them decreased. What felt novel in 2021 feels exhausting in 2026. Altcasts have become the broadcast equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe circa 2024 (and I love Marvel), which is to say they’re technically competent, occasionally impressive, mostly forgettable, and fundamentally unnecessary.

Even the ManningCast, which remains the only alternate broadcast that actually works, used to draw about one million viewers per episode. That’s a small slice of the total Monday Night Football audience, and ESPN is paying Peyton and Eli a reported $18 million per year for a limited schedule. The deal only makes sense if ESPN is also getting Peyton’s Places content and social media buzz from the Manning brand beyond just the ManningCast itself.

That argument is getting harder to make. The ManningCast failed to crack one million viewers at any point this past NFL season, according to Nielsen. Only two episodes topped 900,000 viewers. Three didn’t even reach 600,000. Compare that to the show’s second season in 2022-23, when every single ManningCast broadcast exceeded 1.1 million viewers. The novelty has worn off. The spontaneity that made early seasons exciting has given way to slickly produced showmanship. By the time you’re having the Disney CEO on as part of a PR offensive, you’re not the cool kids anymore.

NBC doesn’t need any of that for Super Bowl LX. The network has Mike Tirico, who has quietly become the best play-by-play announcer in football during his run on Sunday Night Football. He’s gotten better every year since replacing Al Michaels, and at this point, there’s a legitimate argument he’s surpassed his legendary predecessor.

Cris Collinsworth remains one of the few analysts who can explain down what’s happening on the field in a way that educates casual fans without boring or talking down to the diehards. The former Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver is there to explain football, and he’s very good at it.

Then there’s Melissa Stark and Kaylee Hartung, who are as good as anyone working the sidelines right now.

NBC’s decision to skip an altcast might be the last time this happens for a while. ESPN has the Super Bowl in 2027 and will almost certainly bring the ManningCast, possibly joined by a Pat McAfee alternate broadcast given his prominent role at the network and ESPN’s investment in building out alternative viewing experiences — like the Field Pass — beyond just the Manning brothers.

CBS gets the Super Bowl in 2028, which means Nickelodeon will likely be back with SpongeBob and Patrick calling the game for a second time, despite their Super Bowl LVIII broadcast drawing just 1.2 million viewers. The cycle will continue because these networks have valuable IP they feel obligated to leverage, and because producing altcasts has become an expectation rather than an innovation. Nobody wants to be the network that didn’t offer an alternative, even if the alternative barely moves the needle.

But for one year, NBC is betting that Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth, Melissa Stark, and Kaylee Hartung can carry the Super Bowl without help. They’re trusting that the game itself is compelling enough and their broadcast team is strong enough that viewers won’t need three different ways to watch.

The altcast boom was inevitable once the ManningCast proved the concept could work. Networks have been looking for ways to monetize their IP libraries for years, and sports broadcasts offered the perfect opportunity. But somewhere along the way, the innovation became the expectation. Alternate broadcasts stopped being about finding the right talent for the right format and started being about checking boxes. Does Disney own this IP? Can we make it sports-themed? Will it trend on social media? Good enough. Ship it.

NBC is the first network to look at that and decide it doesn’t apply to them. They have a great broadcast team. They have the biggest game of the year. They don’t need SpongeBob’s help to make the Super Bowl feel important. And when you have Tirico and Collinsworth calling Patriots-Seahawks, you don’t need to explain why people should watch. The game sells itself.

Something is refreshing about NBC’s restraint here, especially when streaming services launch with five different tiers and 10 different ways to watch the same content. Every studio movie comes with two post-credits scenes and a Disney+ series continuing the story. Every sports broadcast comes with alternate feeds, second-screen experiences, and interactive components designed to keep you engaged, because networks are terrified you’ll look at your phone.

NBC is trusting that the Super Bowl is interesting enough on its own.

That used to be how every Super Bowl worked. For one year, it still does.