The sports documentary space continues to flourish in a golden age, with unprecedented levels of productions hitting the marketplace. However, that onslaught of films and industry interest has not shifted the desire for top-quality content, according to key execs working in the space. Speaking yesterday at the ’18 NeuLion Sports Media & Technology conference in N.Y., ESPN VP & Exec Producer/ESPN Films & Original Content Libby Geist and HBO Sports Exec VP Peter Nelson said their companies’ guiding principles still have not changed, even as the number of inbound pitches now number in the hundreds per year. “There’s so much out there, but your standards still have to be very high,” Geist said. “Is a big-name director, for example, going to be enough to reel in our audience and really get us excited? ... Tell me about the story that no one’s ever heard, or what’s the interview nobody’s gotten in 10 years? Without that element of ‘Holy Cow! Our fans cannot and will not miss this,’ it’s hard to say yes. I don’t want to get into the volume business. I don’t think that’s where ESPN Films should be. You have to wait for it and be patient.” Added Nelson, “It’s about what is a great story and really going after that consistently.”
CHANGING ECONOMICS: With those retained standards, however, the economics around sports documentaries and long-form storytelling have changed dramatically amid the explosion of available platforms and heightened programmer interest in the form. “There was a time when these [films] were not thought of as economic drivers for networks,” Nelson said. “And then we saw with things like the 'Andre The Giant' documentary, which drew more than 7 million viewers. So for us, it’s how you compare that against a film that you might spend tens of millions of dollars on, and what we’re finding now is that we have a very hot property.” Added Geist, “You have to realize that the market value of these films has drastically changed since we started in this space.”
FIGHT DECISION: Nelson also addressed HBO’s recent decision to exit the live boxing business after 45 years, more than a thousand fights and the sport long standing as a programming lynchpin for the network. “It wasn’t a subjective decision,” he said. “It was strongly rooted in the data we had seen suggesting that boxing not only was no longer making a dent in subscribership but also that if we had acquired more boxing from other areas, other providers, and housed as much boxing as we possibly could, it still wouldn’t make a dent in subscriptions. Looking at that, it became impossible to ignore.” Nelson did say that boxing could still appear in various HBO documentaries going forward.
Quick Hit:
* Geist on the bevy of player-driven video content now existing: “It seems like every athlete has a camera now. It’s a very different time.”
