Ampere: Sports Docs Surged in Lead Up to Summer Olympics

More than 100 sports documentaries were released in the run-up to the Summer Olympic Games in Paris, according to a new Ampere Analysis report.

Between May and July of this year, leading platforms and channels delivered a total of 103 new first-run sports doc titles around the world. In July alone, sports docs accounted for a quarter of all new docs released that month, reflecting a new record.

The last time the global business saw a surge in sports documentaries was ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Ampere reports, with 109 titles released in the three months leading up to the football tournament.

Sports docs now account for 12 percent of all first-run documentaries released so far in 2024, up from 9 percent in 2022 and 6 percent in 2020. SVOD players are out front in this space, but pubcasters are also increasing their commitments. European public broadcasters, led by France Télévisions and the BBC, released the highest volume of new sports documentaries from May to July. Other sports-related entertainment and reality commissions mean that sports content had a record-breaking 17 percent share of all unscripted commissions in July.

Cyrine Amor, senior analyst at Ampere Analysis, noted: “Content producers had prepared in earnest for the spike in interest in sport of all kinds that the Olympics produces. This year, there’s been a huge increase in the number of sports documentaries, docuseries, reality and entertainment programming. Unusually, public broadcasters created more of this material than the global streamers. Sports fans have enjoyed a true summer of sport and documentary creators have turned July 24 into a record month for global releases.”