The four-person crew from Box to Box Films, the production company behind Netflix's hit motorsport documentary series “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” has previously often shot in luxury locations like Monaco and Miami.
But on a recent morning, they gathered in a much less glamorous place: a tacky stand next to a running track in Eaubonne, just outside Paris, where they waited about an hour for a practice session to start.
“This is our livelihood,” Box to Box chief executive Warren Smith said of the wait. It could have been worse: On the other side of town, another crew was filming a runner getting a haircut.
The France footage will eventually become part of the second season of “Sprint,” a Netflix documentary that follows American 100-meter stars Sha'Carey Richardson and Noah Lyles, along with a dozen other track and field athletes.
The series is one of three projects being filmed during this Summer Olympics as part of a partnership between Netflix and the International Olympic Committee, a latecomer to the sports documentary genre but now an enthusiastic participant.
In the same way that “Drive to Survive” forged a deeper connection between fans and Formula 1 auto racing, the IOC hopes these projects will raise awareness and interest among a new (i.e. younger) generation of Olympic fans. These projects include a track and field series, gymnastics' “Simone Biles: Rising” and one about the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team.
So far, the effort has worked: Both “Sprint” and “Simone Biles: Rising” have spent at least two weeks on Netflix's top 10 most-watched shows.
“You can't keep these stories relevant by telling them once every four years,” said Yannis Exarchos, CEO of Olympic Broadcast Services, the IOC's media arm. “You have to keep telling them 24/7, 365 days a year, and in a compelling way.”
Olympic athletes become nationally famous overnight during this three-week period every four years through their gold-medal exploits and memorable moments, but athletes in sports other than football and basketball are often forgotten for three years as they compete in international tournaments with far less publicity after a brief morning and late-night victory lap watched on television in the U.S. At least Americans turn their focus to major sports with free agents and prime-time spectacle in the offseason, broadcast 24 hours a day.
The IOC's partnership with Netflix, coupled with the company's coveted base of 278 million subscribers, is an attempt to emulate the breakneck pace of documentary filmmaking for other sports organizations and encourages other streaming services to forge similar partnerships. It's also an attempt for Netflix and production companies to explore lesser-known sports and their characters.
Exarchos, who has worked at Olympic Broadcasting Services for nearly two decades, said the strategy represents a cultural shift. Previously, he said, the industry viewed the four-year hiatus as an opportunity to build anticipation for the next Olympic cycle. But interest in the Olympics' social channels and website had declined significantly by 2016, and international federations were no longer able to compete with mainstream leagues with billions of dollars in funding to promote their sports, he said.
There was also confusion about what was possible. Brandon Reeg, Netflix's vice president of nonscripted documentary series, said the platform was weary of NBCUniversal's exclusive domestic broadcast deal with the IOC.
“We completely respect that and have never wanted to get involved with them.“, He said.
Netflix and the IOC have teamed up with the NBA's entertainment division and many other organizations to produce “The Redeem Team,” a 97-minute documentary about the 2008 U.S. men's basketball team that won the gold medal after finishing third at the Athens Games in 2004. The film won a Sports Emmy Award and sparked discussions on planning for the Paris Games.
Filmmakers have been exploring Olympic sports and geopolitical themes for more than a century, but on-demand availability of many events has lagged. Amid the decline of linear TV, more popular sports have pursued the dominance of streaming. The NFL, for example, announced a joint venture with Hollywood studio Skydance Media in 2022 to produce projects for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Roku. The league was inspired in part by the cultural impact of “The Last Dance,” a 2020 documentary series that profiled Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls from every angle.
Fans are now craving that format elsewhere: 72% of potential Olympic viewers aged 15 to 45 said in a survey they would be more interested in behind-the-scenes content from the Paris Olympics than the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, according to data from the research arm of United Talent Agency, which represents athletes and entertainers.
“This is a great opportunity to take a format that has been successful in the past and use it for another event,” Danny Barton, UTA's vice president of sports content, said of streaming platforms and the Olympics.
Lieg and Exarchos said they chose from the more than 30 sports taking place in Paris those they believed had compelling stories and familiar names.
“Sprint,” a six-episode series released by Netflix in July, follows runners competing in the high-profile 100- and 200-meter races in the run-up to the Paris Games. Executives at Box to Box Films said the simplicity of the sport made it hard to focus on storylines like those of Lyles, a brash showman who competes in both events, or Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, a Jamaican who, at 37, is competing in her final Olympics. But “Sprint” also includes interviews with Allyson Felix, Usain Bolt and other retired Olympic stars that explain the sport's complexities, including the background to the rivalry between the U.S. and Jamaica.
“Simone Biles: Rising,” an episode of which premiered in July, follows Biles, the most decorated gymnast of all time, as she recovers from the troubled mental block that caused her to withdraw from most events in Tokyo. Religion of Sport, the production company that has documented Tom Brady (one of the studio's founders) and Serena Williams, produced the project as an expansion of a shorter series that premiered on Facebook in 2021.
Like “Sprint,” Biles' documentary uncovered the sport's history and terminology through interviews with current and former gymnasts.
Executive producer Gisele Pallett said that to help audiences understand, the filmmakers slowed down the video of Biles' dizzying aerobatics to show the mistake.
“Unless she landed on her feet, you wouldn't know she'd done anything wrong in the air,” Parrett said. “When something was wrong, we resorted to a variety of creative outlets.”
The second season of the track and field and gymnastics documentary is due to be released later this year, showcasing the athletes' journeys and results in Paris. There were triumphs and dramas: Biles and Lyles won gold medals, while Fraser-Pryce withdrew from the 100m semi-final due to injury. Netflix executive League said he was interested in a future swimming documentary that might feature Katie Ledecky. Exarchos said the IOC was in discussions with sports federations about potential projects on figure skating and skiing for the 2026 Italian Winter Olympics.
Exarchos said the IOC wanted to diversify the sports it featured but would carefully evaluate future series.
“Our vision is to continue to expand not by checking boxes, but by finding the right story, the right athlete and the right sport at the right time,” he said.
He said the IOC was in talks with all of Netflix's major competitors and that behind-the-scenes footage from the opening ceremony along the Seine would be shown in the United States on NBCUniversal's streaming platform Peacock.
“We don't want to be exclusive,” he said. “We want to include everyone.”
