Major League Baseball isn’t the only one that lucked out with a New York Yankees-Los Angeles Dodgers World Series. It turns out, Apple TV+ will also be a beneficiary of the two storied franchises squaring off for a title.
In an announcement last week, Apple TV+ revealed it will commission an all-access documentary series covering the 2024 World Series.
It’s the kind of matchup that deserves its own documentary.
The @Dodgers and @Yankees will face off in the 2024 World Series and we’ll be on the ground capturing it all.
Coming soon to Apple TV+ pic.twitter.com/J1OZ1uzbgP
— Apple TV (@AppleTV) October 21, 2024
The project will be produced by Imagine Documentaries (The Dynasty: New England Patriots), The Machine (Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry), and Derek Jeter’s recently announced Cap 2 Productions. Jeter himself will serve as an executive producer on the series.
The partnership between MLB and Apple TV+ began three years ago when the streaming service reached a deal with the league to broadcast its Friday Night Baseball package. It was the streamer’s first foray into live sports production before picking up exclusive rights to Major League Soccer in 2023.
Like its competitors Netflix and Amazon, Apple has chosen to invest substantially into sports-adjacent content. The streamer boasts docuseries featuring stars such as Lionel Messi and Stephen Curry, along with the aforementioned Patriots series. Not to mention, one of the service’s flagship shows is Ted Lasso.
Considering the star power that will be featured in this season’s World Series, the yet-to-be-named documentary could prove a big hit for Apple. One of the big questions, however, will be just how much access the producers are given. In particular, how accessible will Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani be for this? Ohtani is notoriously inaccessible to the media, but this documentary could offer an opportunity to introduce the Japanese phenom to a wider audience.
Given that MLB has rubber stamped this production, it’d be surprising if Ohtani wasn’t heavily featured. But there will also be plenty of other superstars to highlight like the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, so it’ll be interesting to see what balance the producers strike.
Hopefully, the documentary will be successful in giving fans an inside look at how players, in particular some of baseball’s biggest stars, prepare for and play in a World Series.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.