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Sports documentaries are booming, but some athletes’ stories have been relegated to the bench.
The sports documentary series is having a bit of a moment. Fans seek closer connections to players and teams and leagues look for ways to market their sport to fans that don’t seem forced. Driven by a desire for authenticity and amplified by the pandemic’s digital distance, series including Netflix and Formula 1’s Drive to Survive, FX and English soccer’s Welcome to Wrexham, HBO and the National Football League’s Hard Knocks and Amazon and multiple sports’ (NFL, English Premier League, Italy’s Serie A, international soccer, college football) All or Nothing provide sports and their brand sponsors behind-the-scenes, semi-filtered content built for the social media era.
As such documentary series multiply to include more sports, one group of athletes has been largely left out of the narrative: Women.
This year, that’s going to change significantly. Netflix’s pro tennis and golf series launched this year each feature men and women from each sport. HBO Max’s Angel City just launched its look inside the National Women’s Soccer League’s franchise in Los Angles. Just as significantly, the Athletes United women’s professional softball, volleyball, lacrosse and basketball leagues entered an agreement with Boardwalk Pictures—the production company behind Welcome to Wrexham—to produce a documentary about the league and its athletes. While Boardwalk has also produced Cheer—a Netflix series about competitive cheerleading that’s been one of the few to spotlight female athletes to this point—this documentary would be the first of its streaming siblings to place its spotlight solely on women’s sports and delve into leagues run by the athletes themselves through player executive committees.
“Character is everything … that’s how an audience is going to connect to the story,” Caitlin McGinty, head of brand storytelling at Boardwalk Pictures.
Documenting results
After Welcome to Wrexham debuted last year, Wrexham A.F.C. gained nearly 1 million new followers on social media and saw merchandise sales increase sixfold within 12 months. Much of the second season of Cheer was dedicated to how the first season made the Navarro College Bulldogs team into stars and increased social media followers, commercial opportunities, Cameo fan videos and Dancing with the Stars appearances. Five seasons into Drive to Survive, Formula 1 has added two U.S. races, increased viewership on ESPN and wooed U.S. sponsors.