- Between Courts
- Posts
- Netflix and Chill
Together with
Happy Friday!
SPRINT, Full Swing, The Offseason, and Break Point.
Have you heard of any of these?
If you haven’t, it’s time for you to get a Netflix account.
These are each docu-series Netflix shows following a handful of professional atheltes in golf, tennis, soccer, and track—sports that are popular, but lack media attention and coverage, leaving the casual fans in the dark.
I’ve personally watched all of them, and I’m in the middle of SPRINT now.
I love these styles of shows because it humanizes the athletes and gets you involved with following their journey.
Why are we barking at ESPN Analysts to share reasonable hot takes about wbb when we could be barking at producers to pump out more docu-series content following our favorite players and the players we’ve never heard of.
Let’s get into it. 👇️
Effortless Style, Elevated Comfort: The Dealmaker Pant for the Discerning Gentleman
Tired of juggling multiple wardrobes for different parts of your life? The Dealmaker Pant is your solution. Eliminate the morning scramble and embrace the freedom of having one pair of pants that does it all. Whether you're crushing deadlines at the office, unwinding at home, or grabbing drinks with friends, these versatile pants ensure you're always comfortable, confident, and stylish. Save 15% with code READ15, exclusive to Between Courts readers.
TODAY’S STORY
💥NETFLIX AND CHILL
WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
If you haven’t caught wind of “SPRINT”, “Full Swing”, or “Break Point” yet, it may be time to sign up for a Netflix subscription.
These docu-series dive into the lives of professional athletes in golf, tennis, soccer, and track—sports that, despite their popularity, often fly under the radar in mainstream media.
Personally, I’ve binge-watched all of them, and yes, “SPRINT” did just come out like 24 hours ago.
These shows resonate with me because they humanize athletes, pulling you into their world and making you a part of their journey.
(Side note: Another docu-series is coming soon focused on NWSL players during the off-season, and I am pumped)
Sure, I think the media’s hot-takes give wbb exposure, but I think it’s these docu-series that gives more awareness to the game and builds the fan bases and interest.
Take for example Joel Dahmen.
Joel Dahmen is a professional golf player, but has most recently become the most famous, worst professional golf player all because of Netflix’s Full Swing and has 10x’d his endorsements and fan base since the show aired.
These shows not only celebrate our favorite athletes but also introduce us to new ones we might never have known about.
These shows allow you to see what shapes these athletes’ careers beyond the scoreboards and headlines.
SO WHAT?
Now, we don’t neeeed Netflix to be the sole provider of this content.
Even with the Manning Brothers Production recently launching a wbb docuseries on ABC featuring Kamilla Cardosa, Kiki Rice, and Caitlin Clark, the content fell short of expectations.
It lacked a storyline, felt rushed, and offered little beyond what fans can already glean from social media platforms.
Tons of universities have their own ways of spotlighting their own athletes, primarily on their own social channels and sometimes even ESPN+ if their a bigger a school, but literally no one is tuning into those outside of their Top 5% of fans at best.
I ~think~ the reason colleges are so bad at this is because they have high employee turnover, not enough buy-in from sponsors, and not enough crowd engagement. Heck, probably not enough player engagement too.
Not everyone has a CC to market off of!
Now that we’ve turned a new leaf and have opened the doors to WNBA talk, let’s use the Las Vegas Aces as an example.
The Aces are posting weekly 20 minute plus videos on YouTube giving us a BTS look at their seasons, showing us how their practices are going, the off days, exclusive player interviews where you’re getting non-scripted responses like you see in the media, and it’s great.
It’s well produced, it showcases a couple of players at a time if not 1 at a time, for each video, and it humanizes their athletes, breaking down that fourth wall.
THE BUY-IN
If I were on staff at a college, this is what I’d do literally right now to plan for the upcoming school year:
Planning the content
Choose the topics you want to cover
(1) Off-season training
(2) Life off campus
(3) Personal goals
(4) Day in the life
Filming the content
Today’s college athletes are natural storytellers as-seen-on TikTok, so let’s harness that, minus the dance routines and lip-syncs.
Creating the stories
With a summer’s worth of raw footage from the entire team, now it’s time to craft some narratives.
The benefit of this, is that a lot of this content can be recycled throughout the season, but also the entire college career of that athlete.
Distributing the content
Tease longer videos with sneak peek soundbites across social media
Post full-length videos on YouTube and X
Players and coaches repost on all of their personal channels
Promoting the content
Get advertisers involved $$$
For longer videos, invite the fans to watch in the arena
Time the releases to coincide with gameday’s
Get student run social media pages to promote
I’ve spoken with a few people that work in Marketing for college programs, and they heavily rely on trends and soundbites to elevate their accounts and players.
Not sure if they forgot, but if they want their audience to stop scrolling, they better have a STRONG AF first 0.3 seconds to reel them in to watch a full video, let alone a video that actually has substance.
You can’t create true player interest or team fandom off of 15 second clips, which is why i freaking love these docuseries, and I think they’ll play a huge hand in developing wbb fans worldwide.
They inspire, educate, and entertain, bridging the gap between athletes and fans in ways that traditional sports coverage often overlooks.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s cool to be a wbb fan these days.
But, typically if someone’s a fan, it’s for like 1 person or 1 team, because that’s all they know and see around them, which is that 1 person or team.
So I’m a strong believer that these docuseries are going to be the reason that wbb continues to be the most dominant sport in the world.
The world!
Well, that’s all we’ve got!
Maybe one of these days you’ll see a Between Courts Production start funding some of these projects.
But for now, we’ll just share our ideas on this free little newsletter thing.
We’ll see you next week 👋
Reply