For a third consecutive NFL season, ESPN is taking viewers to an alternate reality with an animated ‘Monday Night Football’ broadcast.
After tackling ‘Toy Story’ and ‘The Simpsons’ with their previous animated alt-casts, ESPN and Disney are teaming up to feature characters from ‘Monsters, Inc.’ during the Week 14 game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Los Angeles Chargers.
The animated alt-cast represents the latest effort the NFL is making to reach a younger audience. In addition to ESPN’s ‘Funday Football,’ the NFL has allowed CBS to air NFL games on its sister station, Nickelodeon. Those games have featured appearances from animated characters, and so too has the network’s weekly ‘NFL Slimetime’ show.
Here’s how you can watch ESPN and Disney’s ‘Monsters Funday Football’ in Week 14 as Mike Wazowski’s Eagles take on’Sulley’ Sullivan’s Chargers.
What channel is the Monsters, Inc. NFL game?
- TV channel: ESPN2 | Disney Channel
NFL fans hoping to be whisked away to Monstropolis will be able to catch ESPN’s ‘Funday Football’ broadcast on ESPN2 or the Disney Channel.
The traditional version of the broadcast – featuring Joe Buck and Troy Aikman – will air on ESPN and ABC while the Peyton and Eli Manning’s ‘ManningCast’ will be on hiatus in Week 14.
Monsters, Inc. Funday Football live stream
- Live stream: ESPN Unlimited | ESPN Select | Disney+ | NFL+ | Fubo
Cord-cutters hoping to watch Funday Football will have a variety of options to do so. ESPN features a new direct-to-consumer streaming platform, ESPN Unlimited, and will also offer the game via ESPN Select, which is a rebrand of the network’s ESPN+ service.
Disney+ – the proprietary streaming service owned by ESPN’s parent company, Disney – will also carry the battle between Wazowski and Sullivan.
Additionally, fans can stream the action with Fubo, which offers a free trial.
Watch Monsters Inc. NFL game with a Fubo free trial
‘Monsters, Inc.’ NFL game start time
- Start time: 8:15 p.m. ET/7:15 p.m. CT
The Mosnters Inc. Funday Football broadcast will begin at 8 p.m. ET (7 p.m. CT) with kickoff slated for 8:15 p.m. ET.
Who are the ‘Monsters Funday Football’ announcers?
Drew Carter (play-by-play) and Dan Orlovsky (game analyst) will be on the call for the ‘Monsters Funday Football’ broadcast in Week 14. Katie Feeney will also appear as a social media correspondent on the broadcast via a series of pre-produced segments.
Carter has been on the call for all previous editions of ESPN’s ‘Funday Football’ series – which began during the 2023 NFL season – while Orlovsky made his debut on ‘The Simpsons Funday Football’ broadcast in 2024.
What is ESPN’s Funday Football?
ESPN’s Funday Football is an alternate broadcast that uses real-time player movement tracked by the NFL’s Next Gen Stats to create a live-animated representation of an NFL game.
As part of the entertainment, various characters from Disney’s library of entertainment will be animated into the game along with avatars resembling NFL players. The 2025 version of the alt-cast will feature characters from ‘Monsters, Inc.’ – most notably, Mike Wazowski and James P. ‘Sulley’ Sullivan will take the field as players while Roz will serve as a ‘sideline reporter’ for the game.
‘Monsters Funday Football’ will be the third edition of the alt-cast. In 2023, ESPN featured a ‘Toy Story’-themed edition of a game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Atlanta Falcons. The 2024 edition of the broadcast featured ‘The Simpsons’ characters during a game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Dallas Cowboys.