Disney wants to turn the 2027 Super Bowl into a “football holiday,” and it’s not waiting until next year to kick off the effort.
When the company’s ESPN and ABC telecast Super Bowl LXI from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, they will do so on Sunday, February 14 — Valentine’s Day — with a federal holiday, President’s Day, on Monday. “What an opportunity for us, “says Andy Tennant, a veteran ESPN producer who was named vice present of Super Bowl production in January of last year, during a recent interview. “We see the Super Bowl as an opportunity to bring everyone together, to celebrate the biggest single game on the planet.”
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If Disney prevails, it will do more than just show the Big Game on ABC and ESPN, for which the company already has rights. Under the terms of Disney’s’ agreement with the NFL, it will also feature a “ManningCast,” its popular “Monday Night Football” simulcast that features plenty of commentary and chatter from Peyton and Eli Manning and their guests, on ESPN2. Meanwhile, there are lots of conversations going on about tapping various parts of the Disney media empire to woo other audiences who might not ordinally tune in the football spectacle.
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“With the full strength of The Walt Disney Company and in collaboration with the NFL, ESPN has embarked on a year-long Super Bowl celebration,” said Jimmy Pitaro, chairman of ESPN, in a statement. “This fan-focused initiative unites our Company’s beloved brands with industry-leading storytelling and technology to showcase football’s greatest stories, heroes, and moments like never before. Across our platforms, screens, and parks, we’ll build momentum throughout the year toward Super Bowl LXI — a monumental event for sports fans everywhere and for ESPN.”
Disney’s run for the Super Bowl will mark the first time the company has enjoyed rights to the event since 2006. Since that time, the gridiron classic has rotated among CBS, NBC and Fox. The game is a solid financial generator: Fox said in May of 2025 that it wrung $800 million worth of revenue from its telecast of Super Bowl LIX. And its audience continues to expand, something that can’t be said of scripted series in the streaming era.
Some Super Bowl elements will be familiar: Tennant suggested ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” crew — Troy Aikman, Joe Buck and Lisa Salters — would be on hand for the 2027 Super Bowl telecast. But the real opportunity for Disney — and the NFL — is to gain an increasing foothold in emerging football audiences, including women and GenZ consumers. There is an increasing emphasis on these groups from advertisers. Indeed, ads in NBC’s Sunday telecast of Super Bowl LX offered telehealth services like Ro and Hims & Hers and featured celebrities such as Sabrina Carpenter and Benson Boone.
Disney has been vocal about its interests in offering tailored “alterna-casts” of sports events, and has experimented in recent years with football, basketball and hockey games tailored for kids with animated figures, or younger crowds via a sports event on the Freeform cable network.
“It’s premature to talk about any ideas that we have for our first Super Bowl. It’s several years away,” Pitaro said in 2021. “But I think the idea of doing an alternate broadcast is something that, certainly, we will want to talk to the league about.”
Discussions about how to tie the Super Bowl to other Disney properties have already begun, says Tennant. “We have moved from embryonic to the infancy stages of conversations on what we are going to do, he says. Disney and the NFL would have to come to terms on the company’s other properties showing the Super Bowl, but “conversations are still ongoing.”
Some ideas under consideration might involve weaving elements of the Super Bowl into established Disney content, says Tennant. One hypothetical example he offered involved tying “The Bachelor” to the Big Game, since it’s being played on Valentine’s Day and roses are a big part of the reality series. “What are the opportunities for us to potentially integrate Super Bowl storylines in series like ‘The Bachelor’?” he asks. “Those are the kinds of conversations we are having.”
The Super Bowl is of growing importance to Disney as it places more emphasis on live programming. The company has assembled a portfolio of events including college football, the Super Bowl, the Grammys, and its annual “Rockin’ New Year’s Eve” celebration.
The company on Sunday and Monday kicked off a new spate of Super Bowl content, with ESPN personnel hosting programs from SoFi Field just after NBC wrapped its telecast of the 2026 game. Monday’s telecast of “Good Morning America” featured a promo touting next year’s Super Bowl and was filled with appearances by more than 60- Disney characters and personalities. ESPN has launched “I Scored a Touchdown,” a series of one-to-two-minute features that spotlight players who reached the end zone in the Super Bowl.
Tennant sees the job as an extension of what he has long been doing at ESPN: telling stories. He helped launch “E: 60,” the series of deeply reported sports profiles and investigations, and was its executive producer from when its start in 2007 until early 2025. He also supervised editorial and production for many years on “Outside The Lines,” an ESPN series that explored news topics tied to sports. Despite his work on those signature series, Tennant says, he’s now working on something that’s gargantuan: “There’s nothing like the Super Bowl.”