'The Simpsons' will be part of Monday Night Football alternate broadcast on Dec. 9
Nancy Cartwright, who voices the character Bart Simpson, left, appears with costumed character Homer Simpson during Fox's "The Simpsons" 30th anniversary celebration at the Empire State Building on Monday, Dec. 17, 2018, in New York. Credit: AP/Evan Agostini
BRISTOL, Conn. — Ay, Caramba! Bart and Homer Simpson, meet “Monday Night Football.”
The Dec. 9 Monday night game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Dallas Cowboys will also air from Atoms Stadium in Springfield as part of an alternate telecast.
“The Simpsons Funday Football” telecast will be streamed on ESPN+ and Disney+ while the game airs on ESPN and ABC.
This is the second year ESPN has done an alternate broadcast for an NFL game. It used the characters from “Toy Story” for last year's Sunday morning game from London between the Atlanta Falcons and Jacksonville Jaguars.
In this iteration, Bart will team up with the Bengals while Homer joins the Cowboys. Others Simpsons characters, including Marge, Lisa and Maggie, will also be featured.
Producers for “The Simpsons” will also have original content for the telecast that will be utilized before, during and after the game.
ESPN has been successful with alternate broadcasts of NFL games, including the “ManningCast” during “Monday Night Football” and playoff games.
The telecast will be entirely animated, with the players’ movements in sync with what is happening in real time on the field. That’s done through player-tracking data enabled by the NFL’s Next Gen Stats system and Beyond Sports.
Beyond Sports, a company based in the Netherlands, will mostly be responsible for the player animation and making sure the player tracking data works with the animated product.
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