There's A Flag In My Cleat!: ESPN And Disney+ Mix 'Toy Story' Into NFL London Game

This is ESPN's second such presentation in this style following the NHL's Big City Greens Classic

For the first time in 13 years, Andy Davis’s bedroom is the room where it happens. On October 1, ESPN+ and Disney+ will present a fully animated, real-time alternate telecast of a National Football League game.

The game will be between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Atlanta Falcons. The first of the NFL’s three games played in London this season, it will be one of ESPN’s streaming-only broadcasts through ESPN+, unless you’re in the home teams' markets. Being a London game at Wembley Stadium, it will stream live at 9:30 a.m. ET/6:30 a.m. PT on ESPN+, Disney+ and NFL+, who is also carrying the alternate broadcast.

But what style is this animated telecast? Well it’s Toy Story, actually. Dubbed “Toy Story Funday Football,” it is arguably the most ambitious alternate-feed telecast of an NFL game to date, and it’s all inside the bedroom of Woody and Buzz and most of the main toys’ former owner: Andy. So technically, there’s still a US-based game being broadcast, even if it’s avatars. Characters including Woody, Buzz, Bo Peep, the Little Green Men, Jessie, Rex, and in his Andy’s room debut, Forky, will be visible on the sidelines, presumably the stands too, and in other elements. Duke Caboom will perform a daring motorcycle stunt as a special halftime show. Actual players from both the teams will be part of the animated feativities as well, with pre-recorded segments and interviews. Drew Carter, Booger McFarland and 12-year-old reporter Pepper Persley will call the game animated, with their movements shown through motion capture.

It keeps with commissioner Roger Goodell’s aggressive foray into streaming and alternate presentations beyond the league’s traditional broadcast ways. Not only does ESPN have its ManningCast hosted by Peyton and Eli Manning for every Monday Night Football game, but CBS Sports has done very successful Wild Card and Christmas alternate broadcasts with Nickelodeon so successful that it’s extending to this season’s Super Bowl. This isn’t Disney’s first kids-sports synergy effort they’ve done this year, as in March, a game between the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals and New York Rangers was transformed with the same real-time animated techniques to become the Big City Greens Classic, broadcast on ESPN+, Disney+, and Disney Channel and Disney XD. It is named so for the animated telecast happening within Big City, the main setting of Disney Channel’s Big City Greens and featuring many of its characters.

While reports indicate that a replay will be available for a limited time, the Big City Greens Classic is still up in its entirety on Disney+. Being as it’s six months later and Veeps replay windows can be as small as a day, that precedent says it can’t be so limited that it’s unreasonable.

Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, TVLine