Baby Yoda Roots for Green Bay Packers in NFC Championship Game

By Variety Staff

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Baby Yoda is a Cheeesehead.

Disney chief Bob Iger tapped the breakout star of “The Mandalorian” to show his support for the Green Bay Packers just as the NFL’s NFC Championship Game got underway on Sunday evening. The Packers are battling the San Francisco 49ers for a shot at the Super Bowl.

The Kansas City Chiefs secured their spot in the big game — marking the team’s first shot at the Lombardi Trophy in 50 years — earlier in the day in a rollicking victory against the Tennessee Titans. Both of Sunday’s conference championship games are expected to bring in blockbuster ratings. The Super Bowl teams will meet on Feb. 2 in Miami.

Iger’s tweet featured clutching a football with the Packers logo. “Game time!! Let’s go @packers,” he wrote. Iger tweeted a similar image on Jan. 13 when the Packers advanced in the playoffs.

The embrace of Baby Yoda in pop culture has been a boon to Disney and its fledgling Disney Plus subscription streaming platform. “,” the first-ever live-action “Star Wars” TV series, was the marquee launch property for the service. The diminutive version of the beloved wise being from “Star Wars” lore became an overnight sensation.

Disney is projected by some analysts to have garnered as many as 20 million or more Disney Plus subscribers since the streaming platform launched on Nov. 12. Disney Plus, which costs $6.99 a month, draws on Disney’s deep and wide content vault. Industryites and investors are both eager to hear the first official subscriber numbers from Disney when the company releases its next quarterly earnings report on Feb. 4.