Apple Renews “Ted Lasso,” Featuring Cristo Fernández, for Third Season

Cristo Fernández will still be bending it like Beckham…

Apple’s hit comedy Ted Lasso, featuring the scene-stealing Mexican actor as part of the ensemble cast, is returning for a third go-round.

Cristo Fernández

The streamer has given an early season 3 renewal to the comedy starring Saturday Night Live alum Jason Sudeikis in the title role, following the series’ breakout first season, early second season renewal, and before production even starts on Season 2 in London in early January.

Ted Lasso, which hails from Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence, is Apple’s No. 1 comedy across all top 50 countries, including the U.S., UK, Germany, France, Canada, Russia, Japan and more. It has broken audience records for Apple TV+, ranking as the No. 1 comedy each week, drawing 25% new viewers to the service since its August 14 launch, according to the streamer. The pop culture phenom has grown its viewership more than 600%, fueled by binge watchers, setting new records for completion and engagement worldwide.

Co-written by Sudeikis and Lawrence, Ted Lasso is based on the popular Coach Ted Lasso character Sudeikis played in NBC Sports videos several years ago. It was developed for television by Sudeikis, Lawrence, Joe Kelly and Brendan Hunt. It stars Sudeikis as Ted Lasso, a small-time college football coach from Kansas hired to coach a professional soccer team in England, despite having no experience coaching soccer. Hannah Waddingham, Brendan Hunt, Jeremy Swift, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Phil Dunster and Nick Mohammed also star.

Sudeikis also serves as executive producer, alongside Lawrence (Scrubs) via his Doozer Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television and Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group.

All episodes of Ted Lasso‘s first season are available for streaming on Apple TV+

Fernández’s previous credits include the short films Jaguar and Mis Mejores Días.

Mars’ Super Bowl Halftime Performance Features Three of Shazam’s Most Searched Moments

Shazam! Bruno Marshalftime performance at the Super Bowl continues to help break records…

Not only did the 28-year-old part-Puerto Rican singer’s performance with the Red Hot Chili Peppers register a record 115.3 million viewers and earn a huge response on the Twittersphere, but it was one of the moments during the big game that nabbed the most Shazams.

Bruno Mars at the Super Bowl

The music search app beat its own Super Bowl record with more than 700,000 uses — more than double the count of last year’s game that featured Beyonce and Destiny’s Child as its halftime performers.

Despite all the music-related ads that aired throughout the broadcast, more than half of the Shazams occurred during Mars’ halftime performance. The top searched moment of the entire game was when the Red Hot Chili Peppers emerged shirtless and rocked the stage with on the band’s hit song”Give It Away,” followed by Mars’ first solo hit, “Just The Way You Are,” with which he closed the halftime show, along with a ton of fireworks.

Coming in third in Shazam’s statistics was Chevrolet’s “Life” ad, a sentimental spot that featured the song “Don’t Leave” by Ane Brun.

Fourth place belongs to Jaguar‘s “Rendezvous” ad, with appearances by Ben Kingsley, Tom Hiddleston and Mark Strong and using an epic action-film score.

Rounding out the top five was Mars’ “Runaway Baby” performance, which pulls from Barry Strong‘s 1960 hit “Money (That’s What I Want).

Following Chevrolet and Jaguar in the top Shazamed Super Bowl ads were Bud Light‘s “Cool Twist,” Bank of America‘s ad which debuted the new single “Invisible” by U2, and Budweiser‘s moving military homecoming, “A Hero’s Welcome.”