Disney+ to Livestream Super Bowl LXI as ESPN Produces Its First-Ever Big Game

Disney confirmed Wednesday, Oct. 7, that Disney+ will livestream Super Bowl LXI on Sunday, Feb. 14, 2027, from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, according to a joint announcement from Disney+ and ESPN made in collaboration with the NFL.

The game marks ESPN's first Super Bowl production in the network's history. It will air on ESPN, ABC and the ESPN app, with ABC carrying the game for the first time since 2006. Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Lisa Salters and Laura Rutledge are set to call the English broadcast, with a separate Spanish-language telecast running on ESPN Deportes.

Every Disney+ subscriber in the U.S. will have access to both the English and Spanish feeds at no extra cost, Disney said. Internationally, Disney+ will stream the game in more than 55 markets, including Latin America, Brazil, the Caribbean, South Africa and Australia and New Zealand. ESPN's linear networks will separately carry the game in more than 130 countries and territories.

Monday Night Football Already Streaming

The Super Bowl deal builds on a pattern already underway this NFL season. Disney+ is carrying two Monday Night Football games this fall, starting with the Dallas Cowboys at Philadelphia Eagles on Oct. 26, with a second game still to be announced. Both will air as scheduled on ESPN, ABC and ESPN Deportes, with the streaming option layered on top.

Awful Announcing reported that ESPN put a Week 16 matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Indianapolis Colts on Disney+ and ABC in December, the first traditional NFL broadcast ever made available to standalone Disney+ subscribers. That access came out of a broader NFL agreement ESPN reached in August 2025. Before then, the only NFL football on Disney+ came through animated "Funday Football" alt-casts built around Toy Story, The Simpsons and Monsters, Inc.

Ad Space Already Gone

Disney disclosed on its most recent earnings call that ABC and ESPN had sold out all commercial inventory for Super Bowl LXI, which the company says is the earliest sellout in Super Bowl history, according to CNBC. Sportico and TheWrap both reported 58 brands across 34 categories bought spots, including nine first-time Super Bowl advertisers. The Los Angeles Times reported some 30-second national spots sold for roughly $10 million. Disney is also selling separate streaming-only ad packages across Disney+, the ESPN app, Hulu Live and Fubo.

For comparison, Fox sold streaming-only ads around $2 million per 30 seconds for its 2025 Tubi simulcast of Super Bowl LIX, which drew 13.6 million viewers on that platform, per the Los Angeles Times.

A Crowded Streaming Field

Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D'Amaro has described Disney+ as the company's "digital centerpiece," according to Sportico, and the platform is on pace to have carried more than 100 live sporting events by the end of 2026, including Formula E races beginning Dec. 18 and select college football games.

Other streamers are moving the same direction. CNBC reported that Alphabet's YouTube is actively seeking additional live sports rights beyond the roughly $2 billion a year it already pays for NFL Sunday Ticket, a deal that runs through the 2029-30 season. Netflix is airing five NFL games this season and, according to Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria, would consider acquiring international NFL rights if they become available. Sportico also noted that HBO Max and Paramount+ are combining into a single service, part of a broader industry push to turn streaming apps into all-purpose platforms rather than single content libraries.

Past Super Bowl streams offer a mixed track record on audience size. CBS's Paramount+ simulcast of Super Bowl LVIII set a streaming record despite reported technical glitches, according to Awful Announcing. NBC's Peacock simulcast of the 2026 game, per TheWrap, became the platform's biggest day ever, with NBC calling it the network's most-watched program in history at roughly 125 million viewers worldwide and a peak of 137 million. Yahoo Sports and the Los Angeles Times, citing the same game, described it instead as the second-largest Super Bowl audience ever at 124.9 million, a framing that measures the game against all-time Super Bowl records rather than against NBC's own history. Both figures can be true simultaneously, but they answer different questions about what the number represents.

What isn't yet settled is how Disney+'s version performs against that bar. Disney has not released subscriber growth projections tied to the Feb. 14 broadcast, and the company has not named a halftime performer for Super Bowl LXI as of this announcement.