After Burning Hands in War With ESPN, Ambitious F1 x Golf Collab is Netflix’s Shot At Apple, Amazon Supremacy

There is absolutely no doubt that F1 and Netflix are a pair made in heaven. The impact of Drive to Survive on the sport and vice versa cannot really be understated. However, it’s not just Drive to Survive that Netflix was looking forward to with F1.

In the recent past, Netflix entered into a bidding war with ESPN, hoping to get the live streaming rights. Obviously, it didn’t go in favor of Netflix, as the broadcast is still being handled by ESPN. However, the ever-persistent Netflix is now set to feature The Netflix Cup; A live-streamed golf tournament where F1 superstars pair up with golf docuseries Full Swing stars ahead of the Las Vegas GP.

What does this tell us? Is this part of the bigger picture that Netflix is using to fight against Amazon and Apple supremacy? Let’s find out!

Netflix’s Big Plan With Drive to Survive, Netflix Cup

Netflix has been trying to get its hands on the sports pie for a very long time now. Of course, it started for F1 with the 2019 edition of Drive to Survive. DTS brought a lot of new eyeballs into the sport and even helped F1 fans get back to the sport. Within a week of the latest season’s debut, a whopping 643,000 unique views meant that Netflix was also benefitting significantly from this move. That could probably be the reason why they tried their hand at F1 live-streaming rights just before the 2022 season.

However, when Netflix attempted this, it definitely was not the first streaming giant to attempt and enter the sports world. Amazon Prime, for quite some time now, has been broadcasting football, tennis, and the NFL. Naturally, this has given Amazon a significant dominance in the sports market. However, Formula 1 made the decision to stick with ESPN for three more years for US streaming. This meant that there was nothing else Netflix could do, other than wait for three more years to elapse. Or did it?

Netflix is putting in a lot of groundwork to enter the sports streaming market. Recently, there have been a lot of rumors going on about how it could get into the boxing biz, thanks to Jake Paul. Remarkably, they’ve previously collaborated with the YouTuber turned boxer before as well. In July this year, they officially announced the launch of Jake Paul’s documentary, titled ‘Untold: Jake Paul the Problem Child’.

Also read: ‘I’m signing up’: Latest Netflix Cup Update Leaves the PGA Tour and F1 fans Exhilarated

Again, they didn’t stop there. Soon after, Netflix launched something big. They entered into the world of Golf, much like they did with F1, and did it full justice. In 2023, they also released a golf documentary titled Full Swing. Much like Drive to Survive, the partnership was mutually beneficial for both PGA Tour and Netflix. The docuseries quickly became a top 10 watched show worldwide, and a lot of the viewers actively started tuning into PGA Tour coverage.

Netflix’s Big Move – Golf x F1

Now, Netflix has two extremely successful sports documentaries. What’s the next move? An extreme crossover to further its bid into the sports world. Ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Netflix is all set to stream The Netflix Cup. It is a tournament where each team consists of one F1 driver and one PGA tour professional. They play an eight-hole match in a special format called a “scramble.” Each individual in the team hits their shots at the same time. Then, the team will work out the strategy to ascertain which ball would be the best to play for the next shot. The top two teams from the initial matches will move to the final hole. Whoever wins it there, wins it all.

Incidentally, this is also the first time a streaming platform has launched a tournament of its own. While other giants like Apple and Amazon had to rely on external parties to host the tournaments, Netflix does not have to deal with them. Will it be enough though? For instance, the signing of Lionel Messi for the MLS was enough for Apple to give him a piece of the pie. The sport is growing at an amazing pace, which gave a lot of room for Apple to take a gamble here.

Will Netflix’s bet towards F1 payoff at the same scale? Here’s where we get to a point of pure speculation. While it is undeniable that Netflix has put a lot of eggs into the F1 basket, and the fact that the sport is putting in significant investment in the US market, Netflix might not break into F1 any time soon.

ESPN bid a whopping $70 million for streaming rights. However, Formula 1’s investment into the streaming world with F1 TV might discourage them from giving the rights to a pure streaming platform.

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All that being said though, if Netflix does manage to bring in more viewers to the sport consistently, things might very well change anytime soon. For now, only time will tell.

“The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of EssentiallySports.”