Disney Stacks Super Bowl LXI Lineup With Even More Alt-Casts

If ESPN parent company Disney has its way, Super Bowl LXI in February will be impossible to miss. 

The network has finalized plans to add several simulcasts to its Super Bowl LXI coverage, a move that brings the game to more Disney-controlled outlets and buttresses the company’s goal of setting a U.S. viewership record from the game. 

The full coverage lineup for the game, set for Feb. 14, 2027 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, includes:

• Primary game coverage on ESPN, ABC, and the ESPN app. 
• A standard simulcast of the game on the Disney+, one of the industry’s most popular general-interest streaming platforms. 
• Super Bowl LXI with Peyton and Eli on ESPN2, bringing the famed Manningcast to its biggest showcase yet. 
• Super Bowl LXI Playbook With Next Gen Stats on the NFL Network, now controlled by Disney as part of a large-scale deal with the NFL. 
• Field Pass with The Pat McAfee Show on ESPNU, providing yet another major platform to arguably ESPN’s biggest on-air personality. 
• Spanish-language coverage on ESPN Deportes. There will also be a Spanish-language presentation of the game on Univision, as NFL rules require availability on an over-the-air network. 

Like the standard game coverage, the alt-casts will also be streamed through the ESPN app. An animated version of Super Bowl has not been announced, but prior history of ESPN big-game presentations using characters from Disney-controlled intellectual property such as The Simpsons and Toy Story suggests it’s possible. 

Each of these presentations will count toward the overall audience figure for Super Bowl LXI in official Nielsen measurements. ESPN has made no secret of its desire to throw the full weight of Disney resources toward the game, and set a new audience record in the process. 

The current single-network audience record in U.S. television history is Super Bowl LIX in early 2025, aired on Fox platforms, which averaged 127.7 million viewers. Fox’s milestone received a sizable boost from its Tubi streaming service, which normally doesn’t air live sports but delivered an average of 13.6 million viewers according to first-party data. 

NBC then employed a similar cross-platform strategy for Super Bowl LX earlier this year, but a comparatively duller game between the Seahawks and Patriots likely contributed to the network falling just short of the audience record with an average of 125.6 million viewers. 

Disney has said it has already sold out its Super Bowl LXI advertising inventory, with most spots thought to have sold at $8 million to $9 million per 30-second unit. 

The upcoming Super Bowl will also be the first to take advantage of several methodology shifts implemented by Nielsen.