By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, Sports Video Group, U.S.
Friday, January 10, 2025 – 4:04 pm
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.”
CBS Sports and Nickelodeon have also teamed up with SMT to create a new lineup of innovative, Nickified graphics, including:
- Slime Zone: A touchdown celebration like no other, with virtual slime cannons filling the screen
- Rope Line of Scrimmage: An imaginative twist on the traditional line of scrimmage
- Best First Down Line Ever: A fun, gooey, animated line that adds excitement to every first down
- CatDog Down and Distance: A playful graphic that adjusts length for varying yardages, inspired by the classic Nickelodeon duo
- Red Zone Animations: Eye-catching visuals that highlight the action-packed moments inside the 20-yard line
- SMT is also providing its SportsCG and QB Stat systems to power live game data and visual enhancements
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.”