Since its inception in early 2021, Meadowlark Media has had plans beyond its presence on the DraftKings Network.
That includes the company’s “Sports Explains the World” documentary and podcast series, which was first announced in October 2022.
But while the podcast portion of the series has been active since last summer, Meadowlark Media’s film presence has largely been limited to the Emmy-nominated Good Rivals, the three-episode docuseries focused on the USA-Mexico soccer rivalry that first debuted on Amazon Prime Video in late 2022.
During a discussion regarding ESPN’s upcoming Stuart Scott 30 For 30 documentary, Dan Le Batard provided an update on Meadowlark Media’s plans for films. And while he didn’t offer many details, the Meadowlark co-founder revealed that the company will have a robust offering of sports documentaries in the not-too-distant future.
“We’re in the documentary business,” Le Batard said during The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. “We will be having between 10 and 20 documentaries coming out in the next couple of years. And one of the lanes that we have that I think that is getting harder and harder to occupy is that we don’t have to worry about corporate dilutions because of who we’re teaming up with, so that we can tell the most honest version of a story.”
While that might seem like a lot of movies to make between now and the end of next year, Meadowlark clearly has a number of documentaries already in the can. The company maintained a strong presence with several screenings at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, while Meadowlark CEO and co-founder John Skipper’s IMDB page includes producer credits on multiple sports documentaries that have yet to be made available to the general public.
Reading between the lines, it appears many of Meadowlark’s documentaries are ready to go and it’s now just a matter of distribution. To that end, it’s worth noting that the company reached a first-look deal with Apple TV+ in 2021, although it’s unclear whether the partnership remains in effect more than two years later.
[The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz]
