NFL’s ultimate pop culture flex: Jay-Z and U2 to take centrestage along with a mind-blowing animated twist
The US National Football League’s (NFL) next big games are getting an unusually heavy dose of entertainment.
U2 is slated to headline the halftime of the league’s first Thanksgiving Eve game in November, while Jay-Z will headline the 2027 Super Bowl halftime show in February. The Super Bowl will also get an animated alternate broadcast that places the game in the Star Wars universe. All three developments were announced late October, and two of them will take place at the same stadium — the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
U2 is scheduled to perform on November 25, when the Green Bay Packers visit the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL’s first Thanksgiving Eve game. The matchup will kick off at 5pm local time and stream on Netflix. The performance will mark U2’s return to the NFL halftime stage more than two decades after the band played Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans in 2002. That show, staged several months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, included Beautiful Day, MLK and Where the Streets Have No Name. The timing also coincides with a milestone for the Irish rock band, which formed in Dublin in 1976 and is celebrating its 50th anniversary. U2 plans to release its 16th studio album, Carnaval de Luz, on November 13 and launch a world tour in 2027.
Meanwhile, NFL Super Bowl LXI is scheduled for February 14 at SoFi Stadium, and Jay-Z has now been officially confirmed to headline the 2027 halftime show, marking a major career milestone for the hip-hop icon who has spent years helping select artistes for the NFL’s biggest musical event. NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation confirmed the announcement on Monday, October 26, revealing that the 25-time Grammy Award winner will take centrestage at the Super Bowl halftime show for the first time ever. Jay-Z’s Roc Nation has helped oversee and produce the NFL’s Super Bowl halftime entertainment since the full-service entertainment and sports management company partnered with the league in 2019.Â
As reported earlier, the rap icon is currently marking the anniversaries of two of his albums, Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint, with a series of stadium shows. He also performed at SoFi Stadium on October 23 and 24, offering him more performance opportunities at the venue several months before the Super Bowl.
Aside from music, the championship game will have another entertainment option that has nothing to do with the halftime stage. ESPN, Lucasfilm and the NFL have announced recently that Super Bowl LXI will receive an animated alternate telecast called Star Wars Funday Football. The programme will recreate every play of the game in real time, turning NFL players into animated avatars inside the Star Wars universe. Characters from across the Lucasfilm franchise will appear during the broadcast, including C-3PO, who will be voiced by original Star Wars cast member Anthony Daniels. The alternate presentation will stream live on Disney+ and the ESPN App, and air on Disney Channel and Disney XD in the USA. It will be produced using player-tracking data from the NFL’s Next Gen Stats and Sony’s Hawk-Eye technology.
Star Wars Funday Football will be the first animated alternate presentation of a Super Bowl. It follows ESPN, Disney and the NFL’s previous Funday Football broadcasts built around Toy Story, The Simpsons and Monsters franchises. The Star Wars version also arrives as Lucasfilm celebrates 50 years of the epic space opera. A newly restored version of the original 1977 Star Wars is scheduled to return to theatres five days after the Super Bowl.
