Sport docuseries - the ‘three pointer’ to future-proofing sport commercially post Covid-19?
- elysahubbard
- Jun 16, 2020
- 7 min read
With live sport on hiatus due to Covid-19, I, like many others, have realised that my life revolves more around sport than I thought! To fill the void, I found myself desperately trawling the internet, trying to find some live sport to watch - something to get excited about. Neither the Hong Kong horse races nor the Taipei T10 Cricket league quite hit the spot!
Fortunately, sports docuseries The Last Dance, F1 Drive to Survive and The Test stepped up to provide me with a little of my ‘sports fix’, turning me into F1's newest fan (and resulting in more streaming platform subscriptions on my bank balance!). Who would have thought Covid-19 could turn me into even more of a sports fan?!
The death of live sport has forced broadcasters to seek alternative programming options and brands and rights holders to identify what can be done during such a sporting ‘black out’ and re-evaluate how best to use sponsorship budgets to engage with fans, customers and staff. Arguably, the coronavirus pandemic has brought the best out of sport. Players, rights holders and brands have offered salary sacrifices, charitable donations, assistance for the vulnerable and increased social media presence to offer fans engaging content. Broadcasters have frozen subscriptions and scheduled watch-a-long replays with player punditry and virtual e-sports tournaments featuring different sports personalities. Ahead of sport’s eagerly anticipated return, broadcasters such as Sky and the BBC collaborated to programme live ‘behind closed doors’ sport on terrestrial TV.
Covid-19 has certainly rocked sport to its core and poses a generational threat to stakeholders across the industry. How will sport bounce back and future proof itself ahead of similar unexpected hurdles?
There is already a strong appetite for non-live sports programming and storytelling, which has further accelerated due to Covid-19, requiring an urgent need for creativity and innovation. Just as the 80's Air Jordan shoe deal represented a shift in athlete-sponsor relationships, athletes and sporting bodies are now acquiring more influence over how their story is told, through the use of digital media and co-production of scripted and non-scripted content. During the last few months, athletes and rights holders will have been thinking about ‘their businesses’ in a way they haven’t before and it is likely there will be a convergence of athletes, rights holders and broadcasters seeking new content collaborations.
ESPN’s The Last Dance is a pertinent example of how sporting icons are taking control over the production and distribution of content, albeit in this instance, 20 years on. Co-produced by Michael Jordan, this series tells the story of Jordan’s sixth and final Championship-winning season with the Chicago Bulls during their 1997/98 season. Launched just as live sport was forced into an unplanned Time Out and shown on ESPN to fill the void (before being launched on Netflix), each episode attracted an average of 5.6m US based viewers on ESPN’s linear channels and 12.8m viewers via on-demand channels. To put this into perspective, coverage from the opening two games of the 2018/19 NBA Finals averaged 13.6m viewers. On Netflix, The Last Dance has currently been streamed to over 24m households worldwide so far.
From a commercial standpoint, The Last Dance showcases the opportunities digital content can offer sponsors. In a single episode, the Nike and Air Jordan logos appeared over 100 times, generating a bump in brand value of around $487,000. According to analytics company GumGum Sports, Jordan’s brand partners received an estimated $1.1m increase from the logos shown in the 5th episode alone, where the creation of the Nike Jordan brand was featured alongside the ‘Be Like Mike’ Gatorade commercial, which drove around $130,000 in sponsorship value.
Logo placement in the NBA is valuable, with the league’s decision in 2019 to allow teams to sell one jersey patch exceeding value expectations by 50% at a value per game of around $132,400. With an average of 477 seconds per game, the jersey patch has a higher duration than any of the brands shown in the 5th episode of The Last Dance, however, the full airing of historic commercials and clear close-ups of Jordan’s shoes offered a greater quality of exposure, leading to a higher value overall.
Moving to the Grid, Netflix’s F1 Drive to Survive has done wonders for motor racing in shifting perceptions outside of the paddock, reaching a new audience and securing new fans. Brought about by F1 commercial rights holder Liberty Media’s desired shift towards greater digital output, the series relies on in-depth access to the 10 racing teams and 20 drivers, revealing the drama and expertise behind the fast cars and their teams. The series delves into intense rivalries, the importance of mechanical skill, underdog stories, contract disputes, driver coping strategies for dealing with immense pressure and the risks the sport entails showcased by an abundance of crash footage, creating exhilarating viewing and turning the sport into a hybrid of action and reality TV.
More than simply being additional content, this series has become a catalyst for a growing F1 fan base. Proof of its success is how top teams Mercedes and Ferrari were bought in after Series 1, offering greater access and featuring more in Series 2.
Amazon Prime’s The Test: A New Era provides an insight into the workings of present-day international cricket. The series captures the 18-months following the infamous Cape Town sandpaper scandal, where Australian cricket was at rock bottom with many fans boycotting the sport, to the team winning over the Australian public and retaining the Ashes. Its success was down to the walls of the dressing room, usually forbidden to outsiders, being so seamlessly breached by a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ camera crew. This showcased the players’ personalities and offered drama, such as: Captain Paine, early in his captaincy tenure, ‘coming of age’ by standing up to ‘bully’ Kholi and injured Khawaja breaking down when he realised his World Cup was over. Footage of the players and coaching staff in their homes highlights the mental rigours of international cricket and the portrayal of bromance double act Stoinis and Zampa is important for a team whose legacy has been rooted in curbing individuality and toxic masculinity. This series shows how athletes might need to get used to TV crews in their personal space to help open up both their sport - and their personalities as athletes - to fans.
With a giant re-building act required and not much to lose, it is arguable that the stakes of such access were low and the outcome is pure marketing genius, offering smart propaganda to showcase the new, ‘morally sound’ Australian cricket team. However, the series could have been more authentic, as it does not scratch a number of issues, such as the underwhelming and seamless return of ball tampering culprits Smith, Warner and Bancroft without their wrongdoing or their mental health mentioned. The ‘bowling group’ were not asked about the events when they – apparently – were the most incensed at the time. A reminder of the importance of objectivity and authenticity in owned content.
PR stunt aside, I did find myself feeling empathetic towards Australia, even supporting them at times. Perhaps the series’ most far reaching impact will be showing governing bodies with cash how offering access on their terms, combined with outside creativity, can develop a product that can compete for eyes in a saturated market, offering an enhanced direction for digital content strategies. It is tragic the ECB allegedly declined a similar offer to cover the 2019 season. This would have surely created blockbuster content with England’s dramatic World Cup Super Over win and an Ashes Series featuring a once-in-a-lifetime innings by England’s reformed hero Ben Stokes and his unlikely, bespectacled wingman Jack Leach. This could have also offered significant brand value to ECB partners such as Specsavers.
When sport returns, its ‘new normal’ will look and feel very different, with many expecting digital content innovations to be fast tracked a generation. Similar to how the Nike Swoosh transformed the sports sponsorship landscape, this coronavirus pandemic might be the push sport needs to ensure successful collaboration with all stakeholders to really engage with fans (and grow new ones) in a constantly evolving and fragmented market. Whether athlete-fronted content of this kind will garner the same attention when live sport resumes is yet to be seen, but there is confidence amongst media companies that it isn’t simply a passing trend and can create further advertising opportunities whilst offering fans the ‘behind the scenes’ footage they crave.
The Last Dance demonstrates how expensive film crews are not necessary to follow a team for a whole season and that production can be achieved in retrospect using archive content and interviews. Additionally, HSBC’s ‘Sevens from Heaven’, following the Fiji rugby sevens team on their journey in achieving Fiji’s first ever Olympic medal (gold) in 2016, is an example of how huge budgets, media buy-in and longer format series are not required to achieve meaningful content. The current generation of athletes, fluent in social media, are natural storytellers and will easily adapt to becoming broadcasters in creating athlete-driven content.
To enable more innovative and memorable partnerships, it will be key for rights holders and brands to work together to define creative and flexible rights packaging. Although sponsorship budgets will no doubt be tight following Covid-19, it will be interesting to see how investment is spent and what is prioritised to help future proof the property and ensure investment is worked harder. An increase in digital content planning is a no brainer and can also offer opportunities for brands to acquire valuable customer data and drive poignant messages about gender equality, mental health, combatting racism and the importance of environmental sustainability through the vehicle of sport.
An exciting content prospect is the Extreme-E Series, which is set to launch next year. Planned as an entity with no onsite fans, the series is sure to produce some innovative and breath-taking content, showcasing mixed gender teams race across some of the most environmentally damaged areas in the world to raise awareness of global warming. Additionally, the Tiger Woods docuseries set to be launched by HBO in the Autumn will offer an insight into the golfer’s battles against racism as well as the injuries and well-known scandals that have plagued his career.
I am hopeful that Cricket Australia have a series in the pipeline following their women’s cricket team winning the ICC World T20 at the MCG in front of a record attendance of 86,174 on International Women's Day last March. The drama of a home team as clear favourites but struggling with injuries to key players and almost knocked out due to rain at the penultimate hurdle, to eventually winning and celebrating on stage with Katy Perry. Pure ‘sportainment’ whilst also pushing women’s sport into the spotlight and hopefully encouraging more girls to give sport a go.
It is clear that digital content offers sports stakeholders the opportunity to bring fans closer to their favourite athletes, teams and competitions through ‘behind the scenes’ footage and authentic storytelling creating pop culture-type personalities out of athletes. Clever use of digital content planning can offer greater opportunities for fan engagement and acquisition and help future proof sport commercially ahead of future unprecedented Time Outs.
Personally, I am extremely excited about sport's 'new normal' and when I can follow the new wave of innovative content inspired by Covid-19 alongside live sport. Blockbuster docuseries are great, but they don’t compare to the real, unscripted drama and atmosphere of being in the stadium!
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