For a company that has expressed no interest in sports, Netflix Inc. is starting to offer quite a lot of them. It’s the unofficial home of Formula One, and, as of this week, both the PGA Tour and professional tennis.
Netflix isn’t airing any live matches of these sports, mind you. It offers documentary series that take viewers behind the scenes months after we know the official results. In Formula One, that means seeing how all the drivers and team bosses talk about their podiums and crashes. In tennis, that could mean seeing the current Novak Djokovic vaccine drama play out from the eyes of his competitors.
Sports documentaries aren’t a brand new category for Netflix. It released the first season of “Last Chance U,” about college football, back in 2016. “Sunderland Til I Die,” about a struggling English soccer team, debuted in late 2018. But nobody in major sports leagues paid Netflix much attention until “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” which first appeared in March 2018.
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