Just as the Stanley Cup Finals kicked off final week, the NHL introduced its subsequent massive play: a reality series about its hockey stars, from the producers of the ultra-popular Formula One: Drive to Survive.
The still-untitled present, which airs on Prime Video in October, will observe Cup finalists Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers and Matthew Tkachuk of the Florida Panthers, in addition to gamers from groups together with the Boston Bruins, the Nashville Predators and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
NHL officers have made one factor clear: They’ve seen what these exhibits have carried out for others, and they’re prepared to obtain. But can a reality program do for hockey what Drive to Survive did for F1 {and professional} race automobile driving — or was that lightning in a bottle?
“I myself was really not a motorsport fan until F1 and Formula One: Drive to Survive,” mentioned Ellen Hyslop, co-founder of The Gist, a sports activities media model geared toward girls.
The Saint John, N.B., resident, a self-proclaimed hockey obsessive, mentioned she now tunes into F1 races on the weekend.
While she says it has been fascinating to watch how The Gist’s viewers has responded to F1 since Drive to Survive premiered, she’s skeptical of whether or not an NHL-focused model of the series may have the same impression on hockey.
“There is a lot of that on-ice mess and drama and chirping that I think is so much fun,” and that might lend itself properly to the reality series format, she mentioned. (Some Drive to Survive fans have likened the present to the Real Housewives properties aired on Bravo.)
Netflix has tried the Drive to Survive remedy with different sports activities, albeit with reasonable success. Break Point adopted the lives of a handful of star tennis gamers, whereas Full Swing brought fans behind the scenes {of professional} golf.
Further including to these challenges is that hockey is a team-oriented sport — and gen Z and millennials are more invested in particular person athletes than groups, Hyslop mentioned.
“Athletes that play an individual sport recognize that, yes, what they do on court or on the links or on the track is important.
“But additionally they acknowledge that they’re in the enterprise of leisure — and that their persona can also be what is going on to get them sponsorship cash, get them fans, get them followers.”
Executive producer Paul Martin acknowledged the different dynamic, telling The Associated Press that while “our sort of storytelling hinges on people having the ability to drive these sort of narratives … you’ve gotten to be tremendous respectful that it’s a workforce sport.”Â
‘Everybody has seen the effects’ on F1, says NHL exec
The NHL has dabbled with the reality format before, making several seasons of HBO’s 24/7 documentary series. Individual teams have also tried their hand with doc-style programming, from the Toronto Maple Leafs’ All or Nothing documentary to the Boston Bruins’ Behind the B web series.
The league will take any chance it gets to grow the sport and develop its audience, NHL executive Steve Mayer said in a press release announcing the upcoming series.
“I feel everyone has seen the results that Drive to Survive had on Formula One racing, Full Swing has carried out lots for golf, and clearly the storytelling that is concerned is exclusive and really totally different,” Mayer said.
There’s been a surge in popularity for Formula 1 among younger fans, thanks to Netflix’s Drive to Survive series. One of the biggest superstars to emerge is Formula 1’s only Black driver, Lewis Hamilton, who recently signed on as a producer for an F1 movie starring Brad Pitt.
Formula One has grown exponentially in recent years. Average viewership of F1 races in the U.S. almost doubled from 554,000Â in 2018 to 1.11 million in 2023, according to ESPN, which airs the sport on several of its platforms.
Part of that is from the crossover effect that Drive to Survive had on the actual sport, after it premiered in 2019 and grew in popularity during the pandemic.
According to a May 2022 report by viewership analytics firm Nielsen, 2.3 per cent more people were inspired by Drive to Survive to watch an F1 event that year. Thirty-four per cent of respondents said they became a fan of the sport after watching the series.Â
The sport’s female fanbase has also grown, with the F1 organization saying that Drive to Survive has been “important” in drawing women to races. Around 40 per cent of F1 fans were women as of November 2022, up eight per cent from five years before, its CEO Stefano Domenicali said at the time.
“It’s been actually fascinating to see how our viewers has responded to the sport ever since Drive to Survive got here out,” Hyslop said.
But she noted that F1’s initial intention was to bring the sport to a more global audience, not necessarily a more female one. The NHL, similarly, has been trying to reach extra eyeballs in the U.S.
“I feel from a geography perspective, [the NHL is] sort of taking a web page out of the same ebook as F1 on that aspect of issues,” she said.
A ‘natural extension’ of Rogers streaming deal
Formula One: Drive to Survive is a case study in “utilizing efficient storytelling to actually promote your sport product to new fans and new customers,” said Cheri Bradish, a sport marketing associate professor and director of the Future of Sport Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University.
A mask-off moment for the NHL won’t hurt either, she said — literally.
“It’s all the time been recognized from a advertising perspective that these sports activities that do not have the helmets and which might be nearer to the fans, reminiscent of skilled basketball gamers, it is simpler for common fans and customers to relate to these gamers.”
The announcement also comes after Rogers announced a streaming deal with Amazon Prime Video, which saw the Canadian telecom sell its NHL broadcasting rights to the streaming giant. Prime will exclusively stream regular season hockey games in Canada on Monday nights for the next two seasons.
“This is a pure extension, and a why and an output of that partnership,” said Bradish.
For Hyslop, it’s also an indication that the way people are consuming sports is changing — especially with a move away from linear television.
“It’s actually, actually fascinating that Prime continues to be a spot in an area the place they’re housing hockey content material…. I feel that that is a fantastic sign that the NHL is rising and doing the proper issues, particularly in the U.S. market.”