Netflix, which added 7.7 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2022 on $7.85 billion in quarterly revenue, is getting a lot of attention for its sports documentaries.
The streamer, which has renewed the enormously popular “Drive to Survive” with Formula 1 for the 2023 season, recently released five bingeworthy episodes of “Break Point,” a new series following the 2022 pro tennis season.
The forward-looking company that was once mailing DVDs to your front door is also working on a golf series with PGA Tour and a docuseries with Tour de France.
At the same time, Netflix has resisted entering media rights bidding for live sports. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has compared making sizeable live event rights investments as akin to “renting” big sports, something he doesn’t want to do.
In contrast, Prime Video from Amazon, available in 240 countries, is pursuing a path of carrying both live sports and documentary style programming.
Amazon reportedly paid $1 billion a year for the rights to 15 Thursday NFL games each season through 2032.
Beyond Thursday Night Football, Prime Video’s growing lineup of live sports across the globe includes WNBA, the Seattle Storm, the New York Yankees, Seattle Sounders FC, and Overtime Elite in the United States; ONE Championship in the United States and Canada; Premier League in the United Kingdom; US Open Tennis, ATP, and WTA in the United Kingdom and Ireland; UEFA Champions League football in Germany and Italy; Roland-Garros and Ligue 1 in France; Australian Swimming globally; New Zealand Cricket in India; and NBA in Brazil.
On the documentary side, viewers are mostly familiar with the Amazon Original All or Nothing sports docuseries including All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur, All or Nothing: Juventus, All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs, and seasons with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, Los Angeles Rams, Dallas Cowboys, Carolina Panthers, and Philadelphia Eagles, as well as the NCAA’s Michigan Wolverines football team.
Prime Video recently announced its latest docuseries, this time with a sport that sometimes takes all and gives nothing.
The Ride promises 8 wild episodes from PBR (Professional Bull Riders) “taking fans inside the world of the PBR Team Series, onto the dirt and into the lives of its biggest stars like never before,” according to the press announcement.
The Ride, produced by Kinetic Content, will premiere later in the second half of 2023 on Prime Video, according to PBR social posts.
The bull riding organization hopes to engage the youth audience, just as Indy Car, in announcing their upcoming reality show 100 Days to Indy, premiering in the spring on The CW then available on Vice’s platforms, has said that series is all about growing the Gen Z audience.
PBR’s year is now split into individual competition (the current Unleash The Beast series that has set a January full-month record for PBR in live event attendance) and the PBR Team Series that fills the second half of the calendar with 5-on-5 bull riding games.
The Ride takes up the latter, following a colorful cast of bull riders and coaches throughout the PBR Team Series, as they navigated the inaugural season of the sport’s newest team-based competition.
Just as “Drive to Survive” has been transformational for F1 so does The Ride have the potential to truly push the surging sport into the mainstream, especially as shows like Yellowstone stoke massive interest in cowboys and the Western way of life.
So now the increasing slate of sports documentaries can add bull riding games to the ever-compelling mix.
Now these all access shows are certainly not new. The legendary Ross Greenburg pioneered the genre at HBO with “Hard Knocks,” and then later insiders views of Navy Football to “The Road To The Winter Classic.” Also don’t forget the original success of the UFC had a lot to do with their special show “The Ultimate Fighter,” which came about early on in the MMA push as a partnership with Spike TV. There were also numerous other lower budget attempts at colleges and universities, and short form series that teams in almost every pro sport have done for over a decade with various forms of success or lack there of.
The key to success in many cases, especially with streaming content, is not millions of eyeballs all the time, but buzz and relevance and share of voice, and then giving those with an affinity, deep or casual, the ability to learn and engage more than ever before. The best of these efforts most recently have also created parallel content discussion platforms…Reddit chats, podcasts, additional short form video…that gave even more storytelling in various forms.
So while there is no guarantee of widespread audience, the ability to use these shows, pricey as they can be, for both storytelling and marketing continues to rise, as long as they are engaged, authentic and deliver a POV the consumer wants.
Will they continue to work? Let’s see…literally.
For sports fans – well, those with a strong wi-fi connection – has there ever been a better time to be alive?
