ESPN is branding the next 12 months as “The Year of the Super Bowl,” launching a coordinated campaign across ESPN and Disney properties as the network builds toward its first Super Bowl production on Feb. 14, 2027.
The initiative kicked off over the weekend with “The Handoff,” a 24-hour event that moved from SoFi Stadium to Disneyland, in which Chris Berman symbolically passed coverage responsibilities to Scott Van Pelt. ESPN is now rolling out the content slate that will carry the campaign through next year, including weekly storytelling features and a new podcast series hosted by Jeremy Schaap.
“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,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said 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.”
The centerpiece of ESPN’s content rollout is “I Scored a Touchdown,” a weekly feature series spotlighting players who reached the end zone in Super Bowls. The features run 1-2 minutes and will appear across ESPN shows and platforms, with ESPN planning to showcase 61 players before Super Bowl LXI. The first installment featured Giants wide receiver David Tyree — focusing not on his iconic helmet catch in Super Bowl XLII — but on his fourth quarter touchdown earlier in that game that gave New York a 10-7 lead.
ESPN also debuted “The Biggest Game,” a weekly video podcast hosted by Schaap that revisits six decades of Super Bowl moments. The premiere episode features Berman, who has covered 44 consecutive Super Bowls. New episodes will begin rolling out weekly around the 2026 NFL Draft.
ESPN also launched “We’re Going,” a marketing spot that debuted on Good Morning America on Monday morning. The campaign reimagines the “I’m Going to Disney World” tradition and features more than 60 Disney characters and personalities heading toward Super Bowl LXI. The spot draws from nearly four decades of cultural history, dating back to the Super Bowl in 1987, and will run across both ESPN and Disney platforms throughout the year.
ESPN isn’t planning to flood every broadcast with Super Bowl content over the next year. The network is focusing its campaign on major NFL moments — the draft, the start of the 2026 season, and key Monday Night Football games — rather than forcing Super Bowl references into unrelated programming. You won’t see Super Bowl LXI promos interrupting an NBA game in March or college football coverage in the fall unless there’s a clear reason for it.
Super Bowl LXI will be ABC’s first Super Bowl broadcast since 2006 and ESPN’s first ever. Joe Buck has called it the “biggest day in ESPN history,” and the network has spent years preparing for the moment. ESPN hired Fox’s Artie Kempner as Monday Night Football director specifically with an eye toward the Super Bowl, brought Buck and Troy Aikman over from Fox in 2022, and recently finalized its deal with the NFL to take control of NFL Network in exchange for giving up a 10% stake in itself.
After nearly five decades without broadcasting a Super Bowl, ESPN is treating Feb. 14, 2027, like the culmination of everything the network has built since 1979.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.