Netflix announced a partnership with Major League Baseball encompassing two projects centered around the Boston Red Sox. Here’s more from a release:
In a groundbreaking move, Netflix will grant viewers unprecedented access to a Major League Baseball franchise for the first time, chronicling the Red Sox’s 2024 season through an exclusive docuseries. The docuseries will boast unprecedented access to the Boston Red Sox organization, granting viewers intimate insights into the lives of players, coaches and executives throughout the upcoming MLB season.
The series is scheduled to premiere in 2025.
Netflix is teaming up with Major League Baseball for two new projects about the Boston Red Sox.
For the first time, Netflix will follow an MLB team over the course of a full season. This docuseries will feature unprecedented access to Red Sox players, coaches and executives… pic.twitter.com/1VKdax4Dvt
— Netflix (@netflix) February 7, 2024
Later this year, Netflix will also debut a documentary on the 2004 Red Sox season, a campaign that finally brought the franchise its first World Series championship in 86 years.
While this is unprecedented for Netflix to do an all-access MLB doc, the idea itself is not. If you can recall, Showtime Sports did a similar series called The Franchise, which followed the San Francisco Giants in 2011 and the Miami Marlins in 2012. The network canceled the ’12 version after just seven episodes.
The Miami one was originally envisioned as an eight-episode series, but the docuseries was mutually shortened following Showtime’s decision to limit its broadcast commitment. This adjustment came amid the Marlins’ challenging season, as they stood in last place with a 55-67 record at the time of the cancellation.
In recent years, behind-the-scenes access has been limited to team-produced content disseminated through platforms like YouTube. Netflix will have behind-the-scenes access to players, coaches and executives from Spring Training through the end of the ’24 season.
According to Sean McAdam of MassLive, in 2021, preliminary dialogues were initiated amongst Netflix, Major League Baseball and the leadership of the Red Sox ownership group. The parties met again at the end of the ’22 season, with prospective director Greg Whiteley, who had helmed other sports projects including Wrestlers, Cheer and Last Chance U.
Whiteley and Netflix producers met with around 10 Red Sox players last April, and this proceeded from there. As per Ian M. Browne of MLB.com, the initial MLB approach here wasn’t specific to the Red Sox, though.
“It wasn’t necessarily going to be about the Red Sox. It was just more of the importance of getting baseball into this medium, these sort of doc series and global platform opportunities,” said Red Sox chief marketing officer Adam Grossman.
…”MLB took some time to concept,” added Grossman. “What would make the most sense from a baseball standpoint, from the industry standpoint? Is it leagues, is it players, multiple teams or specific teams? It could go so many different ways. And over the course of the year, I think what they landed on was that it would probably be best — given the nature of the grind of a season — to feature one team. Then the question was, what team would do it?”
[MLB.com, MassLive, Netflix on Twitter/X]
