The Boston Red Sox are already under the microscope, but the team figures to be even more so this coming season — though not for the reasons fans might normally expect.
MLB and the Red Sox announced Wednesday that a project that has been in the works for the past three years is coming to an end, with a Netflix documentary crew following the club through the 2024 season. The production is slated to premiere on the streaming service in 2025. Netflix will also air a special documentary on the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Red Sox, which broke the organization’s 86-year World Series title drought.
Filming for the yearlong documentary is set to begin next week during spring training. Unlike other sports documentaries like HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” it’s not framed as a weekly record of the team’s wins and losses, but instead focuses on the human needs of the players’ lives.
“A lot of people, even in the athletic community, don’t fully understand what it’s like to play 162 games, it’s no different than anything else in professional sports,” said Red Sox chief marketing officer Adam Grossman. The athletics. “That’s one piece, and the other piece is the people behind these uniforms. They have needs and ideas, there is a test of endurance that they go through (at the time) and there is a whole world that may not appear the way they think.
Although it may seem odd that a documentary team would choose to follow a team not projected to be near the top of the league standings, the idea was already in the works as early as 2021 when Netflix executives met with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. As well as Red Sox principal owner John Henry and chairman Tom Werner, who spent a long time in television production.
Initial talks did not involve the Red Sox, but focused on ways to use Netflix’s global platform to increase interest in baseball. During the early talks, Netflix produced a very popular documentary on Formula One racing called “Driving to Survive” and created a huge interest in the sport.
The Red Sox were adamant that they would not receive any financial compensation from Netflix for the project.
“It’s really a marketing initiative,” Grossman said. “This is nothing that changes hands of any kind of money and this is really telling a lot of people under the tent in a way that they have never been told in a very important and growing medium.
“What we’re seeing around sports is that there are a lot of people who are interested in sports and players, even if they didn’t grow up playing the game,” Grossman added. “Part of that now is the platform and the tools to bring people into the tent. And some of them are at Fenway Park, some of them will be on Netflix. Again, at the core, fans want a championship, an incredible ballpark. We do too. Now, there’s just more opportunity to cast a wider net.”
After debating for a year various documentary concepts focused on featuring multiple teams in one season or following multiple players, MLB proposed focusing on just one team. The Red Sox were one of the few teams considered, and in September 2022 the idea reached out to Netflix executives, including proposed director Greg Whiteley, who previously starred in the Netflix documentaries “Last Chance U” and “Cheer Up.” Executive Sam Kennedy.
It’s no secret that baseball’s popularity has waned over the past two decades with the rise of the NBA and NFL. The latter two leagues have done an outstanding job of marketing their players and thus become household names. The pace of play in baseball, although faster last year, has more to do with its image and popularity than football and basketball, but marketing the game differently has also been a focus. Bringing the game to a wider audience while focusing on the human body rather than X and OS seemed like a good way from MLB’s perspective.
“We don’t have to do this, but nothing is greater than this opportunity,” Grossman said of the debate over how to approach the Netflix project.
Gaining player approval and understanding was paramount. Gabe Spitzer, Netflix’s vice president of fictional sports, traveled to Boston with director Whiteley to meet with Cora, Kennedy, Werner and several others last April when they got an idea of how to film a potential documentary. Red Sox assistant general manager of baseball operations Raquel Ferreira as well as about 10 players.
“Then we had no idea what was going to happen, except that we had to give it a chance, and if the players shut up and said, ‘No way,’ we’d move on. But that wasn’t the case,” Grossman said.
Nick Pivetta, the Red Sox representative to the MLB Players Association, shortstop Trevor Story and outfielder Rob Refsnyder were key to bringing the idea to life from a player’s perspective, not wanting to have as much of a frontline role in the project as to who could be involved and how much, and how to protect the players.
“These guys have done a really good job of looking at this objectively, looking at the positives, understanding that this is a little bit different, letting the team know what’s coming and what’s coming, and making sure there’s an ongoing conversation,” Grossman said. “Raquel, in particular, was instrumental in continuing the conversation with the players from an organizational standpoint, so it was a healthy process to evaluate something we’ve never done before,” he said.
There is no mandate from the team or Netflix on the cast’s involvement. Some may choose to be the main character with their trials and tribulations recorded in time and others may not. The cast and the stories become fluid.
“Not everyone wants to be a household name,” Grossman said. “Everybody has a different focal point or a different niche, so we talked a lot with the director, just saying, hey, not everybody’s going to be for this. There may be a sweep shot in the dugout or clubhouse. That’s one thing. It’s a very different thing to follow someone home… If people don’t want to participate, we don’t force them. He doesn’t need it either, but we have to provide more access, which we do.
There is some anxiety about bringing documentary crew members into the clubhouse mix. There’s no telling what news will come out around the team throughout the season. It’s no secret that the Red Sox have struggled with a disgruntled fan base and less-than-stellar production with three playoff finishes in four years. Managing all of these and ensuring that this project is not a timely distraction will be key.
Grossman said these are all things that have been debated and discussed.
“We don’t know who the characters are, we don’t know what the story is going to be,” he said. “I think when you can think about it in terms of, really, man, ‘Are we sure?’
“This opportunity is really compelling. Number one and number two, if we’re going to grow the game collectively, the players, the league, the Red Sox, it’s really important, we have to do these things,” he said. “It’s not just a good thing. It is very important.
Grossman likened the documentary to the launch of the City Connection uniforms in 2021. The yellow and blue jerseys were a big departure from the traditional red and white home uniforms, and even with the tie-in to the Boston Marathon, unveiling a bold color scheme was a big risk. . They were nervous at the reception, but eventually dove in.
“That was ultimately embraced by our fans and our players,” he said. We think, by the same token, that this will be so.
There will no doubt be a legion of fans upset by the documentary, which could be seen as a distraction for the team. But time will tell how they all unfold. Obviously this project was not easy and he has been working on it for the past few years.
“I think it’s going to be fun for the die-hard fans, but also those who have never seen a baseball game before,” Grossman said. I think that makes it fun for the players, for the game, and for us from a platform perspective.
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(Photo: David Butler II / USA Today)