NICKELODEON AND CBS SPORTS SET FOR NICKELODEON’S NFL WILD CARD GAME LIVE FROM BIKINI BOTTOM WHEN THE CHARGERS FACE THE TEXANS ON SATURDAY, JAN. 11, AT 4:30 PM ET
Slime-filled Wild Card Weekend Alternate Telecast to Feature SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star Reprising Roles in the Booth, Alongside CBS Sports’ Nate Burleson, in Game Set in Bikini Bottom
Nickelodeon’s NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom to Also Include Fan-Favorite Characters Featured Across Paramount’s Portfolio
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Nickelodeon and CBS Sports’ special Slime-filled alternate telecast during the NFL’s Wild Card Weekend will feature the Los Angeles Chargers taking on the Houston Texans during Nickelodeon’s NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom on Saturday, Jan. 11, at 4:30 PM (ET). The special presentation will transport viewers back to SpongeBob SquarePants’ colorful undersea home with enhanced Nick-ified graphics, advanced augmented reality and appearances by fan-favorite characters featured across Paramount’s portfolio. Nickelodeon’s NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom will air alongside CBS Sports’ broadcast of the game on The CBS Television Network, and is one of six games during Wild Card Weekend across Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Following their debut in Super Bowl LVIII Live from Bikini Bottom, an animated SpongeBob SquarePants (voiced by Tom Kenny) and Patrick Star (voiced by Bill Fagerbakke) will reprise their roles in the virtual booth. The duo will be joined by CBS Sports analyst Nate Burleson, with Sandy Cheeks (voiced by Carolyn Lawrence) and NFL Slimetime’s Dylan Schefter reporting live on the sidelines. Nickelodeon’s beloved Latina explorer Dora (voiced by Diana Zermeño) returns to explain the rules and penalty calls during the game.
In addition to the denizens of Bikini Bottom and celebrity fish, Nickelodeon’s NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom will also showcase appearances by iconic characters featured across Paramount’s portfolio, including: Megatron and Optimus Prime (Transformers One); Arnold and Helga (Hey Arnold!); Cat and Dog (CatDog); Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Shadow (Sonic the Hedgehog 3); the Loud family (The Loud House); Tiny Chef (The Tiny Chef Show); Wanda and Cosmo (The Faily OddParents: A New Wish); Reptar, Chuckie and Tommy (Rugrats); and many more.
Nickelodeon’s NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom will also include: hijinks throughout the game from a group of “Wild Cod,” paying homage to classic NFL superfans; the return of the iconic Submarine Blimp, fully equipped to Slime the crowd around the stadium; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who will appear on the field to launch pizzas to the crowd; a PAW Patrol-themed “SkyeCam”; brand-new end zone clam cannons that fire Slime, chum, Krabby Patties and more; and an exclusive sneak peek of Henry Danger The Movie during halftime. The production will continue to showcase one-of-a-kind content and Nick-themed elements throughout, including surprise guest appearances, original on-field graphics, virtual filters, and more for kids and families.
Ahead of the game, fans can dive into Nickelodeon's NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom by visiting Nick.com/NVP to vote for which player they think SpongeBob and Patrick should pick to receive the NVP award.
Following Nickelodeon's NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom, Nickelodeon will invite fans to join Nate Burleson, SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star, Sandy Cheeks and Dylan Schefter, along with fan-favorite Nick stars, to relive the craziest and Slimiest NFL Wild Card moments in Bikini Bottom Breakdown: NFL Wild Card, premiering Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT). The hour-long special follows a Wild Card-themed episode of the weekly NFL series NFL Slimetime, airing at 7:30 p.m. (ET/PT) on Nickelodeon.
This season’s NFL Wild Card telecast on Nickelodeon will mark CBS Sports’ and Nickelodeon’s sixth family-friendly collaboration on an NFL game – and third NFL Wild Card game. It follows up Super Bowl LVIII Live from Bikini Bottom, the historic Sports Emmy Award-winning alternate telecast of the Super Bowl, which was the first of its kind.
The Nickelodeon’s NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom will be streamed on mobile devices with NFL+. CBS Sports’ telecast will also be streamed across digital devices via Paramount+, the CBS Sports app and NFL digital properties.
The Nickelodeon’s NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom is produced by CBS Sports in association with Nickelodeon Productions. Harold Bryant serves as executive producer of THE NFL ON CBS, and CBS Sports’ Shawn Robbins is coordinating producer of the game. Production for Nickelodeon is overseen by Ashley Kaplan, executive vice president, Nickelodeon & Awesomeness Unscripted & Digital Franchise Studio; Paul J Medford, vice president of unscripted current series; Luke Wahl, vice president of unscripted creative; and Jennifer Bryson, vice president of production, tentpoles, events & music & specials.
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Update (1/10) - Nickelodeon has hinted that Jimmy Neutron, Rocko and Heffer from Rocko's Modern Life, and The Smurfs will feature during Nickelodeon’s NFL Wild Card Game Live from Bikini Bottom!
From Sports Video Group:
NFL Playoffs 2025: CBS Sports and Nickelodeon Go Beyond SpongeBob Universe, Boost AR Technology With Latest Slime-Filled Altcast
AR graphics for Chargers–Texans are again driven by Silver Spoon Animation
Nickelodeon and CBS Sports are set to produce their sixth slime-filled alternative NFL telecast: NFL Wild Card Game Live From Bikini Bottom. And Saturday’s SpongeBob SquarePants–themed presentation of the Chargers–Texans matchup will serve as a tribute to just how far these AR-graphics–fueled broadcasts have come — both technologically and creatively — since the first Nickelodeon altcast of an NFL game, in 2021.
“You always want to top what you did the last time around; that’s for sure,” says CBS Sports’ Shawn Robbins, who will once again serve as coordinating producer of the game. “Our primary goals this time around are to bring in more characters than ever before and to push the technology further than we ever have.”
More Characters, More Fun: Upping the Ante After Super Bowl LVIII
CBS Sports and Nickelodeon’s sixth family-friendly collaboration on an NFL game — the third NFL Wild Card game — follows Super Bowl LVIII Live From Bikini Bottom, which won a Sports Emmy Award and marked the first-ever altcast for a Super Bowl.
Upping the ante for this outing, the Nickelodeon broadcast will feature appearances by fan-favorite characters from Paramount’s portfolio beyond the SpongeBob SquarePants universe: Transformers, Hey Arnold!, CatDog, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Loud House, The Tiny Chef Show, The Fairly OddParents, Rugrats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many more.
“We genuinely felt we hit a home run on the Super Bowl,” says Robbins, “but there is always room for improvement. We achieved our goals, got in everything we wanted to do, so we immediately started thinking about what we could do to give it a bigger feel. The SpongeBob universe is phenomenal, but there’s a whole big world of Nickelodeon [IP] that we didn’t touch on in the previous games. That’s what we’re bringing to this game. There will be some surprises and Nickelodeon characters you weren’t expecting to see.”
Silver Spoon Animation is once again at the center of the production, running eight Unreal 5.4 Engines from Pixotope (with redundant backups) to drive the augmented-reality–graphics operation. Three camera-tracking technologies are being deployed for the production: G3DVu, SMT, and Stype.
“There is no better moment that show the power of augmented reality for sports TV than in situations like this, where it is actually part of the storytelling,” says Jason Cohen, SVP, remote technical operations, CBS Sports. “It isn’t just there for eye candy; it’s actually there to move the story ahead.”
Earlier this week, a Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) scan of NRG Stadium in Houston to provide Silver Spoon with the 3D mesh model that will serve as the canvas for Saturday’s presentation. Unlike at Super Bowl LVIII, for which the scan was done weeks in advance, the Lidar scan could not be performed until the playoff rankings became official following last week’s regular-season finale.
“For the Super Bowl,” says Robbins, “we knew the venue way in advance, and we had two weeks to prepare once we knew who the teams would be. But, for Wild Card, we find out not only the teams but also the venue, and we have less than a week to prepare since it’s a Saturday game. The technical challenges have been a lot greater this week, especially since we’ve upped production. Yes, we did two Wild Card games in the past — New Orleans and Dallas — where we found out the week of the game, but, now that we’ve raised the bar in terms of the production, it’s an even bigger lift.”
In terms of the in-game AR-graphics workflow, the production team is using modified Xbox controllers to insert virtual elements on the field.
“We’ve surrounded ourselves with the right people who know how to innovate,” says Cohen. “It’s important to partner with the types of companies and vendors that can help elevate your overall product. When we started four years ago, the machines simply didn’t have the processing power that they do today. We’ve come a long way in a rather short time.”
Onsite in Houston: Side-by-Side Trucks, Real and Animated Announcers
The Nickelodeon effort will be a side-by-side broadcast from separate trucks — Game Creek Video Peacock A and B units and Edit 1 truck — alongside the main CBS trucks (NEP Supershooter 4 units).
The Nickelodeon broadcast will have nine of its own manned cameras, as well as access to more than a dozen camera feeds from the main CBS broadcast.
“Doing a regular game or a fully animated game is very different from meshing those worlds together,” says Cohen. “We are mixing regular-game coverage with the animated portion. That means you have to ensure normal NFL-game coverage in terms of super slow motion and all the right angles, like low and high end-zone cameras. And then you have to layer in the extra components required to bring the AR to life. It’s a complicated dance.”
Robbins adds, “What’s interesting about this time around is that we’ve raised the bar as far as level of difficulty goes. You’re going to see a lot of cases where it will be a switcher effect from TD right into an EVS tape roll and then into an AR effect. A lot of sequences that you’ll see in this broadcast are three different technologies happening in a span of just a few seconds. That’s something we wouldn’t have even considered in the early days of these [alternative broadcasts].”
Following their debut in Super Bowl LVIII Live From Bikini Bottom, animated SpongeBob SquarePants (voiced by Tom Kenny) and Patrick Star (voiced by Bill Fagerbakke) will reprise their roles in the virtual booth alongside CBS Sports analyst Nate Burleson. Meanwhile, Sandy Cheeks (voiced by Carolyn Lawrence) and NFL Slimetime’s Dylan Schefter will report live on the sidelines. In addition, Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer (voiced by Diana Zermeño) returns to explain the rules and penalty calls during the game.
Kenny, Fagerbakke, and Lawrence will each wear an iPhone-based headset throughout the game to provide facial-capture data for the live character animations.
“When [Kenny and Fagerbakke] are doing the game,” Robbins explains, “they’re side by side with [Burleson]; they’re not in separate rooms or anything like that. They’re right next to each other, so their reactions are 100% in real time. They will get the same experience that you get from Jim Nantz and Tony Romo sitting next to each other in the booth [on the main CBS broadcast].”
Cohen says, “We have three animated characters being done with mocap, and we’re going to combine them with two real human beings. To have all that video and audio in sync and working together to make sure that it’s a seamless experience is not an easy task, but it shows how far the technology and the sophistication of the production has come.”
At Nickelodeon HQ: Animation Team Continues To Push the Envelope
In addition to the operation onsite, Nickelodeon’s team of animators will be hard at work at Paramount Global’s office at 1515 Broadway in New York City, creating Nick-themed elements throughout, original on-field graphics, virtual filters, and more.
“This is our sixth game,” notes Nickelodeon Animation Director Tim Lines, “so we have many different buckets of enhancements that we are bringing to the game for storytelling and to add visual flare.”
Live video feeds will be fed to the NYC facility, where animations will be integrated into the broadcast and will appear in first and second replays within the broadcast.
In addition, a wealth of prebuilt animations will make their way into the broadcast. “We are introducing the whole Nick universe,” Lines explains. “We wanted to dip into classic gags and bring the chaos of Nickelodeon to the game. We’ve prebuilt a ton of animations where characters mess with the screen and the score bar.”
Nickelodeon also has partnered with Finger Works to customize its telestration system and enable the animation team to put their own spin on the coverage in real time throughout the game.
“We’ve made emoji streams and meme reactions that can happen in real time according to whatever is happening in the game at that moment,” says Lines. “Our focus is on making this more live and having more instant reactions so that we can bring that Nickelodeon energy to the game in real time. I think we’ve done exactly that.”
Among the planned on-air animations: hijinks throughout the game from a group of “Wild Cod,” paying homage to classic NFL superfans; the return of the iconic Submarine Blimp, fully equipped to slime the crowd around the stadium; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who will appear on the field to launch pizzas into the crowd; a PAW Patrol–themed “SkyeCam”; brand-new end-zone clam cannons that fire slime, chum, Krabby Patties, and more; and an exclusive sneak peek of Henry Danger the Movie during halftime.
Because Lines and company knew that they would not know which teams would be playing until the week of the broadcast, they planned out the majority of the in-game narratives to be modular. The animation team came up with cutscene scenarios that would fit into any stadium and could feature any two teams. In addition, Nick’s animation team this week is creating custom elements that are team-specific and will be worked into the broadcast.
“This team of animators have been with us from the start,” notes Lines. “They have so much fun with it. At this point, we have a solid fundamental grasp of the tech involved and what it’s capable of, which allows us to innovate and come up with ideas that we wouldn’t have even considered the first year. We’re mixing pre-produced cutscenes with live game feeds and making it feel truly seamless. I think this year is going to be the most immersive we’ve ever done.”
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Originally published: January 06, 2025 at 23:56 GMT.
H/T: PR Newswire.
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