Sports Doc Fatigue: Hollywood’s New Endurance Test (and How to Cure It)
Amid ‘way too much’ programming, producers, agents & execs tell me how they’re rewriting the playbook to keep audiences in the game
I write about TV from L.A. and host The Ankler podcast. I reported on brands funding reality TV, interviewed a top agent about the unscripted market and wrote about what insiders expect from new Amazon TV head Peter Friedlander. I’m elaine@theankler.com
As pretty much every Dodgers fan in Los Angeles can attest right now, live sports are major. NFL games dominate the year-end Nielsen tallies more reliably than any scripted TV show can, and networks and streaming services have spent years building on viewer thirst for sporting endeavors with an increasing number of sports documentaries, sports talk shows and all sorts of other athletics-adjacent programming.
My colleagues Sean McNulty of The Wakeup and Entertainment Strategy Guy have both run the numbers through their business brains a couple of times and come to the conclusion that sports docs are shooting bricks, or at least have a viewership ceiling. But buyers keep buying. Which prompts the question: Years after the Formula 1: Drive to Survive phenomenon that spurred a sports doc spree, are streamers and networks finally right-sizing their sports-related programming budgets and buys? Live sports aside, have we hit Peak Sports TV?
To hear insiders tell it: yes and no.
Over the summer, my colleague Manori Ravindran told you all about the brutally competitive landscape for indie sports documentarians as fewer league rights are available and some teams try to take their storytelling in-house. Ampere Analysis shared with her that series orders for sports-related shows in the U.S. had plunged from 104 series in the top half of 2024 to 64 series in the back half.
But after weeks of conversations with agents and producers stateside, I get the sense that even if people are worried about a bubble that’s about to burst, they’re still seeing enough demand from distributors that the development market remains hot — for now.
“Definitely, it feels like we’re at an apex moment,” one senior-level unscripted TV agent tells me. But this person still made a point to add that “there are still many great stories to tell and there are really interesting premium doc stories to tell.”
A second unscripted TV agent says “it’s the best of times and worst of times. The market is really strong, but there’s also so much coming out that it’s hard for a consumer, even the ones that love the genre, to keep pace.”
For today’s Series Business, I spoke to Andrew Fried of Boardwalk Pictures (the company behind Welcome to Wrexham, Cheer and America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders), Colin Campbell of Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions (NFL follow-doc Quarterback and NBA follow-doc Starting Five for Netflix), Done + Dusted CEO Melanie Fletcher and more execs, producers and agents buying, selling and developing unscripted sports docs and series.
After weeks of calls and digging, here’s what insiders revealed to me about how the sports TV business is rewriting its playbook. I’ll tell you:
The cost per episode to make a follow-doc like Netflix’s Quarterback or Drive to Survive, and what athletes’ deals for these series look like
How top producers are altering their sports strategy to keep buyers (and fans) in the game
What defines a sports show when so many kinds of athletes are on screen
The one genre reps say is totally oversaturated — even as Netflix and other streamers keep ordering more
Which high-profile follow-doc disappointed some insiders despite the beloved team at its center
Why casual fans — and even non-fans — now hold the most power in the unscripted market
The next big play: turning live sports into full-blown entertainment spectacles
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