The International Olympic Committee has taken another step in furthering its attempts to better engage an audience in between Games by aligning with Netflix on the production of three documentaries.
The IOC documentaries will consist of three series, one of which is focused on US gymnast Simone Biles, one on sprinters called Sprint, and one on Olympic men’s basketball.
The announcement made by the IOC ties in with Netflix’s own announcement that it has backed up its acquisition of the National Football League Christmas Day package with a deal to stream the Dallas Cowboys’ Jerry Jones documentary with Skydance.
IOC content made its documentary debut on Netflix in 2022 following a global distribution deal for The Redeem Team documentary on the US men’s basketball team’s pursuit of gold at Beijing 2008. It marked the first collaborative feature documentary between the Olympic body and Netflix.
Placing content on Netflix to access a powerful demographic is a major strand of the IOC’s play to increase year-round engagement. It also continues to wrestle with how to tap into esports’ burgeoning audience as part of the solution to the problem, and continues to pivot towards its Olympic Virtual Series.
The inaugural Olympic Qualifier Series, which began today (Thursday) in Budapest, is another avenue the IOC is pursuing to encourage rights-holding broadcasters to ‘tell the story’ in between Games. Historically strict IOC rules around access have also been relaxed somewhat for Paris 2024 to allow Olympic Broadcasting Services to capture ‘storytelling’ content to feed future documentaries.
The trio of Netflix productions are supported by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), the International Basketball Federation (Fiba) and World Athletics.
The sprinters docuseries will focus on Sha’Carri Richardson, Noah Lyles and Shericka Jackson. Lyles had a documentary series stream on NBC’s Peacock, an Olympics rights-holder in the US, around the World Championships last year.
Box to Box films, which has produced many of Netflix’s top sports documentaries, is producing Sprint with the Olympic Channel, while Olympic Men’s Basketball is being produced by Words & Pictures, the Olympic Channel and High Ground Productions. Simone Biles: Rising is a four-part series, debuting with two episodes in July. It is being produced by Religion of Sports in association with the Olympic Channel.
“The upcoming Netflix sports series offer a captivating glimpse into the lives of Olympic athletes who are at the heart of the Olympic Games, delivering inspiring stories and perspectives,” said Jérôme Parmentier, IOC vice-president for media rights and content partnerships. “These series will build excitement ahead of the Olympic Games Paris 2024, which will be broadcast by our media rights-holders across the globe.”
Speaking to SportBusiness in October 2022 about The Redeem Team, Anne-Sophie Voumard, managing director of IOC Television and Marketing Services, explained: “This experience will drive us to consider more content creation possibly outside of Games time via a different mix of distribution in order for Olympic content to reach people in different demographics and platforms, and so that the Olympics Games remain front of mind with people.
“It’s something that we will pursue as a strategy.”
Dallas Cowboys
Netflix and the NFL’s relationship has continued to evolve since its NFL quarterbacks documentary series, with the league announcing the streamer would get Christmas Day broadcasts beginning this year. The documentary series on famed Cowboys owner Jones being produced by Skydance will stream on Netflix.
The 10-part series resembles that of the popular Michael Jordan documentary, The Last Dance, and will focus on the team’s three titles from the 1990s. Skydance Sports, NFL Films and Stardust Frames Productions are all working on the series, which is being executive produced by Charlotte Jones, Jerry Jones’ daughter and the Cowboys executive vice-president and chief brand officer.
Netflix is also developing a documentary series on the Cowboys cheerleaders, while its boxing event between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson will take place at the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium on July 20.
Netflix’s sports documentaries have been largely successful, even helping spur fandom for sports in new markets, most notably with Formula 1 docuseries Drive to Survive, helping grow the F1 audience in the United States. The success of Drive to Survive accelerated other projects including with the ATP and WTA and PGA Tour, a 2022 Fifa World Cup documentary, a La Liga docuseries focused on the 2023-24 season, a series on the 2022 Tour de France, a US women’s national team 2023 World Cup docuseries, and two docuseries on MLB’s Boston Red Sox.
However, production ceased on a potential third season of the Break Point tennis series amid concerns over dwindling interest due to a lack of access to star players.
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