Starting with The Last Dance, the 2020s have seen a boom in sports documentaries.
After ESPN’s Michael Jordan project, hits like Drive To Survive, new Hard Knocks series and Welcome To Wrexham got streamers in on the action. With more distributors than ever and audiences consistently responding to sports stories, big new projects emerged regularly.
That has begun to change. The output has lessened, both as a result of streamers’ new emphasis on profitability and of audiences’ apparent boredom with the format. Big series like Untold or major subject matter like the Dallas Cowboys and UConn Huskies still break through, but the market is getting slimmer.
A new report from Sports Business Journal shows the shocking numbers behind the cut-back. Where “premium” sports docs were selling to distributors for around $8 million apiece earlier this decade, “media companies just aren’t paying fees well north of $5 million like they were during the streaming wars.”
As the report notes, many production companies that sprouted during the sports doc arms race of five to seven years ago have begun producing other sports content, including live events. Just this week, HBO announced it would no longer air in-season editions of Hard Knocks.
Some stories will still fetch top dollar, especially when recognized filmmakers and exceptional sports stars are featured. The recently released Novak Djokovic film from the director of The Last Dance was highly anticipated, as was Apple TV+’s The Dynasty and the axed Colin Kaepernick series from ESPN. Presumably, they set the (seemingly diminished) market in recent years.
There’s also the likelihood that the success of docuseries like The Last Dance was outsized thanks to its timing during the pandemic, when TV audiences were more captive at home.
“The appetite for sports documentaries is incredibly high,” Park Stories founder Rand Getlin told SBJ. “There was just this flood of athlete-focused documentary content that the market was finding and wasn’t necessarily performing as well as the star power may have led you to believe it should.”
It doesn’t make sense for audiences or media companies to put out expensive, low-quality content just because it is tied to a sports star. The industry seems to be learning its lesson and moving away from paying big money for athletes who want to tell their own stories.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is an Editorial Lead at Awful Announcing overseeing digital content and special projects. He lives in Phoenix and has covered sports media for Awful Announcing since 2023.