Vice Media is ramping up its sports side, especially around its Vice TV linear channel.
Deadline’s Dade Hayes reported Thursday that the company is launching a sports division, which will see Vice TV co-produce and air seven original sports series early in 2025 and run prime-time programming blocks carrying the Vice Sports brand.
And they have some big names attached, including partnerships with Omaha Productions and The Volume, and docuseries on Rick Pitino and John Calipari that will air ahead of March Madness:
Vice Media Launches Sports Arm; 50-Plus Hours Of Programming Includes Series On Top College Basketball Coaches Rick Pitino & John Calipari; Omaha Productions … https://t.co/YoXDrOVHkt
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) December 12, 2024
Here’s more from Hayes’ piece on some of the specifics:
The company will produce more than 50 hours of sports-themed docuseries, programs, events, and podcasts for global distributors across television and digital. Among the initial partners with Vice is Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions.
Anchoring the network’s sports slate are the original series Pitino: Red Storm Rising and Calipari: Razor’s Edge, which center on two prominent and controversial college basketball coaches. Vice TV will also air The Verdict and four original series from Vice Studios – Dark Side of the Cage; The Grudge; Sports Gone Wrong; and the highly anticipated sixth season of Vice TV signature franchise Dark Side of the Ring.
…Along with Vice TV’s original sports series, the network will acquire and air 100 hours of additional sports programming, ranging from events to podcast. That slate includes Nightcap with Shannon Sharpe and Ochocinco: Recap, The Draymond Green Show with Baron Davis: Recap, previous seasons of American Ninja Warrior, PDC World Championship Darts, Arena Football One, and docuseries and live event recaps from Red Bull.
…Hailing Vice Media’s longtime signature of “authentic, differentiated, and compelling content,” CEO Bruce Dixon said the sports launch would provide a valuable new way to connect with audiences. “Given the demand for sports content around the world is greater than ever before, we are well-positioned to offer an alternative to the mainstream, airing not only on our own Vice TV network but across other media platforms,” he said.
Vice’s relationship with sports has been up and down over the years. Sports was one of the media company’s early focuses, and they had a separate and prominent sports vertical for written stories on their website for years, but ended that in 2017 with a pivot to video.
They were doing some sports videos even before then, including with The Clubhouse channel focused on athlete shows and with short documentaries from Mike Tollin and Mandalay Sports Media, but many of those initiatives have fallen off over the years (and things have changed dramatically for the company, including with a 2023 bankruptcy filing and the February 2024 layoffs of hundreds and temporary end to publishing on Vice.com, which only relaunched in September).
But sports docuseries have paid off for Vice throughout the turmoil, particularly the Dark Side of the Ring docuseries covering the world of professional wrestling. Since 2019, that series has covered a lot of notable subjects across five seasons, with the fifth premiering last January.
And it’s significant that it’s continuing as part of this, and that there’s a MMA spinoff coming with Dark Side of the Cage. (Also, Vice has worked on many sports doc projects for other companies, including The American Gladiators Documentary and Stolen Gold for ESPN, and they’re expected to continue doing projects that air elsewhere as well.)
It’s also notable to see Vice add these docuseries on Pitino and Calipari (the latter in conjunction with Omaha Productions) for Vice TV. And it’s interesting to see them add content focused on some big podcasts, such as those recap shows for The Volume’s Nightcap with Shannon Sharpe and Ochocinco and The Draymond Green Show with Baron Davis. The shift to sports programming fits with what we’re seeing from some other linear entertainment networks too, perhaps especially truTV. We’ll see how this particular sports embrace plays out for Vice.
[Deadline]
