SUPER BOWL LVIII
How to watch the SpongeBob SquarePants Super Bowl broadcast
If you’re looking for an alternative broadcast for the showpiece sporting event, here’s how you can find it.
Are you ready, kids? Spongebob Squarepants will be broadcasting the Super Bowl live onto your screens this year, along with his friend, Patrick the Starfish. Yes, the popular children’s character has found some suitably large headphones and will be sharing the microphone duties from Bikini Bottom as the Kansas City Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49ers at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Nickelodeon and CBS Sports teamed up to announce the first-ever alternate telecast for the Super Bowl, which will air on the kid’s television channel on Sunday, ahead of kick-off.
What channel is the Spongebob Squarepants Super Bowl show?
Well, mom and dad, it’s the one channel your child knows how to find on the television remote without looking down at the numbers: Nickelodeon. The channel, owned by Paramount Global, the same company that CBS belongs to, have decided to put on a child-friendly broadcast with the cast from Bikini Bottom, who would have been watching the action anyway.
SpongeBob SquarePants (Tom Kenny) and Patrick Star (Bill Fagerbakke) will call the game along with human CBS Sports pundits Nate Burleson and Noah Eagle. Larry the Lobster (Mr. Lawrence) will provide live commentary and Sandy Cheeks (Carolyn Lawrence) will make her sideline reporting debut. For some reason, however, the promo photos show her with her fishbowl helmet still sealed, despite being able to breathe the oxygen from the air.
The Nickelodeon NFL broadcast looks to appeal to children with the addition of augmented reality animations. For example, when a player makes a touchdown, like shown above, gigantic cannons splurt out green slime all over the endzone (or what the broadcast calls a “slime zone”). I think that was Patrick’s decision.
It’s not the first time that the NFL have dipped into children’s telly, with the Chicago Bears-New Orleans Saints NFC Wild Card game being broadcast on the kids’ channel back in 2021. It was a resounding success, with the broadcasting corporation later publishing that “CBS and Nickelodeon scored a win with viewers of all ages as an average of 30.653 million viewers watched the Chicago Bears-New Orleans Saints NFC Wild Card game across both networks” and that, incredibly, it gained “more Viewership than Any CBS Sunday Wild Card Game in Seven Years”. I suppose it’s a win-win: kids get to see their favourite characters and mommy and daddy can watch the game, blocking out the infuriating squeaks and squeals that come with the territory, which they’re used to doing anyway.