Netflix will continue its trend of giving sports fans unprecedented access to behind-the-scenes stories by expanding its stable of docuseries to the baseball diamond. On Wednesday, Netflix and MLB announced that cameras will follow the Boston Red Sox throughout the 2024 season.
The show, which will air in 2025, will feature footage from spring training to the final pitch of the 2024 season. Netflix and MLB considered several different options for the show, and they ultimately decided that focusing on one team would be the best way to convey the highs and lows of a 162-game season.
The Red Sox were willing to be featured in the docuseries, and team CEO and president Sam Kennedy said the final decision was left up to manager Alex Cora and the players.
"This is one of the largest marketing initiatives we have ever undertaken," Kennedy said. "When we formally began discussing this opportunity nearly 18 months ago, we stressed to our players that the decision to pursue this project would ultimately be up to them. I am proud of our players, [manager] Alex Cora and our baseball operations leadership for having the courage to embrace such a project and open our clubhouse and Fenway Park to a truly global audience."
Cora said the team has embraced the idea, and he wants the world to see their individual stories, which go well beyond the ballpark.
"We're going to embrace this experience from the very first day of filming to the last," Cora said. "This is an incredible opportunity for the entire Red Sox organization, but I'm most excited about what this means for our players. Netflix will be able to magnify their stories in a way Major League Baseball has never seen."
Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story said that Netflix's other docuseries affected his decision. Story loves getting to know more about the athletes in other sports, so this was a "unique opportunity" that he didn't want to miss.
Netflix already has several sports docuseries in rotation, with the most popular being "Drive to Survive," which centers around Formula 1. Netflix also has shows centered around golf, tennis, and NASCAR,
On top of the series centered around the 2024 season, Netflix will also be filming a series about the 2004 Red Sox, who broke the "Curse of the Bambino" and won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. That will air in 2024, before the release of the show about this year's team.
