HBO’s Hard Knocks might not have been the first American sports docuseries, but it felt groundbreaking at the time. A peek behind the curtain to see what it’s really like putting together an NFL team from the first day of practice to the first game of the season. The genre got another shot in the arm with ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, which has given us some of the most poignant and memorable portraits at sports-centric moments from across the years. Showtime’s A Season with Notre Dame Football was one of the latest sports docuseries to give audiences another angle to watch their favorite team or sport from.
These days, it’s just assumed that any sports cable network is going to have docuseries. Behind-the-scenes access, intimate portraits, historical looks back, etc. We’ve become accustomed to the style of these shows and accustomed to seeing them on cable.
In recent months, however, streaming services that have already been making inroads in the worlds of prestige TV and original programming are dipping their own toes in the world of sports documentary series. Once more, the game is changing.
Amazon recently premiered the new series All or Nothing: A Season With The Arizona Cardinals, produced in conjuction with NFL Films. Now comes the new Netflix docuseries “Last Chance U” about the 2015 East Mississippi Community College football season, which premieres July 29.
The access is “unprecedented,” but the truth is you’re used to that by now. What makes the expansion of sports docs to streaming services so exciting is that it’s expanding the amount of topics that can be explored. Maybe either of these docuseries happen without Amazon or Netflix, or maybe they don’t. But the chances that we’ll see more like them is going up exponentially and that’s great news for sports fans.
All of this doesn’t even include online content providers like Vice Sports and Bleacher Report, the latter of whom is premiering their own documentary about Michael Vick on July 11. And there’s plenty more out there as well.
The point is, it’s a great time for documentarians looking for financial backing and distribution for their ideas. O.J.: Made in America needed an ESPN in order to happen as it did. For other documentaries, there might not be room at an ESPN or HBO, but there’s plenty of room at Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and other upstarts looking not only for content, but for any kind of edge they can get on traditional broadcasters. Consider sports docs just one more way to wedge their way into your viewing habits.
Something tells us sports fans are fine with the extra options.
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