sport news Why sports are queuing up to be captured in real time and swarming to TV ... trends now
Next week it will be Augusta National. This Sunday, Melbourne’s Albert Park. Earlier this month, Twickenham and the Stade de France.
These days, not a weekend passes without a camera crew stalking sport stars in the heat and hidden corners of battle. Over time, those rare glimpses are stitched together to form the next behind-the-scenes documentary. It is an industry snowballing on a swelling number of streaming platforms.
‘Every sport, every team and every individual wants one of these shows made about them,’ says Leo Pearlman, executive producer of hit Netflix series Sunderland ‘Til I Die.
Rugby union is the latest to peel back the curtain, with Netflix having recorded every collision of this year’s Six Nations. Formula One’s Drive to Survive is filming a sixth series. Tennis (Break Point) and golf (Full Swing) recently released their first and have had a second commissioned. A documentary on last year’s Tour de France is out this summer.
Newcastle are the next Premier League club being followed by Amazon Prime, while Disney’s Welcome to Wrexham continues to chart the Hollywood makeover of north Wales.
Netflix's popular 'Drive to Survive' series has helped bring hordes of new fans to Formula One
Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds (left) and Rob McElhenney (right) are continuing to profit from Disney's 'Welcome to Wrexham' series, which goes behind the scenes at the Welsh club
Apple TV will air a show on Boris Becker next week and one on Lewis Hamilton later this year, while Netflix are releasing a series about David Beckham, whose media company have also filmed Ronnie O’Sullivan for an upcoming documentary.
So, how did we get here? Which teams or sports could be next? And where will all this lead?
Contacts from across the world, keen for their own slice of the pie, have reached out to Ian Holmes, the man who secured F1’s deal with Netflix. ‘I’ve had some weird and wonderful requests,’ he says. ‘One from polo.’ He reckons rodeo, or downhill skiing, could make for fascinating TV.
Even more intriguingly, Holmes has held conversations ‘with certain people at certain organisations’ who are exploring a significant plot twist. A change of role for the likes of Netflix and Amazon. From streamers to sports owners.
Apple TV are preparing to launch a show about former tennis star Boris Becker later this week
Marty Callner was at his dinner table in Beverley Hills when, all of a sudden, he went quiet.
‘I put my head down and didn’t say anything for about 15 minutes,’ recalls the veteran director, who has worked across comedy and music with likes of Robin Williams and The Rolling Stones. ‘Then I came up and said, “I think I have an incredible idea!”.’
What soon crystallised in his mind was Hard Knocks, which first aired in 2001 and has been described as ‘the first sports-based reality series’ in TV history.
‘It was behind the scenes, it was clandestine, it was forbidden territory,’ says Callner. ‘Back then it was very revolutionary. It’s real drama and real life is better than anything you can write.’
More than two decades on, the show continues to take viewers inside American football’s brutal world. The NFL even have the power to force franchises to take part.
On this side of the Atlantic, behind-the-scenes documentaries started to appear before the millennium. An Impossible Job chronicled Graham Taylor’s failure to take England to the 1994 World Cup. Living With Lions followed the British Lions to South Africa in 1997. Premier Passions covered Sunderland’s relegation that same year.
‘None of those guys knew what they were really opening themselves up to,’ says Pearlman. ‘It was pre-reality TV. I don't think they understood the implication of allowing the cameras there. In a way that that's what makes them brilliant, but also in a way, it at times feels a little exploitative.
‘If Premier Passions or the Graham Taylor one came out now, in this social media world we now live in, I feel like people would end up leaving the sport they love, turning to drink or killing themselves.’
These days, however, the appeal of these shows for the subjects is rather more obvious. ‘They get attention, and today everybody is an attention whore,’ claims Callner.
But this is about more than vanity. ‘They list Hard Knocks as one of the reasons for big the success of the NFL,’ adds Callner. The same goes for Drive to Survive, which has helped send F1’s popularity spiralling - particularly in America.
Last year, ESPN signed a deal to
