Alex Becker
Netflix is trying its hand at live sports, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Though no official Netflix source has made an announcement, the WSJ reported yesterday that streaming superpower is planning to host a celebrity golf tournament in an attempt to join the live sports streaming market. Streamers such as Amazon Prime and Hulu have already begun breaking into the live sports realm and it seems as if Netflix is trying to get in on the fun.
Netflix put in a bid last year to get the rights to air Formula One racing, but ultimately lost out to ESPN who signed a three-year deal with the racing organization. They had also previously attempted to get the rights to some cycling and tennis matches, but failed to acquire those rights as well.
After having no luck buying rights from sports leagues and organizations, Netflix has now decided to take matters into their own hands and produce their own live sporting events — a celebrity golf tournament.
In the past few years, Netflix has focused its attention within the sports world mainly on docuseries such as Full Swing, Break Point, Last Chance U, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, and many more. Now, in an effort to transition into live sports, Netflix is bringing two of their most streamed docuseries together in a golf tournament.
The tournament is planned to be held in Las Vegas at some point this upcoming Fall and will feature pro golfers from the show Full Swing paired up with Formula One drivers from Drive to Survive. Remaining details are still being finalized and will become publicly available in the future.
This will be Netflix’s third time attempting a live streamed event with the past two going in very different directions. In March, Netflix produced the first ever live streamed comedy special with Chris Rock. It went smoothly and was exceptionally successful, capitalizing on Will Smith acting like a fool back at the 2022 Oscars. However, just a month later in April, Netflix experienced widespread outages during a live reunion special of their hit show Love Is Blind. The outages caused severe backlash from viewers and casted doubt on Netflix as a reliable live streaming partner. Now, to prove to the world that they can in fact be trusted with live television, Netflix has opted to produce this celebrity golf tournament all on their own accord.
I for one am pumped for this tournament. Outside of Lewis Hamilton I couldn’t name a single F1 driver, and yet I’m still excited to see these guys go out and compete with the pros. I think it will be a lot like the Capital One: The Match things that they’ve done with Charles Barkely, Tom Brady, and now Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen, only I think these guys will be worse. I don’t know why, but I just feel like dudes who drive in circles for a living may not be able to hit the ball as far as guys who throw footballs 100 yards downfield. I could be dead wrong, who knows? Anyway, this will be a cool thing to bet on since I’m sure no one knows who in F1 is actually a good golfer, so we’ll probably get some great value on lines. Maybe we’ll even get some Happy Gilmore-Bob Barker-esque beef out there on the course.
