For the third season of Full Swing, which makes its debut on Netflix Tuesday, producers emphasized the tone that originally made the show a breakout hit in 2023.

It’s a significant year for the program and the somehow-still-growing genre of behind-the-scenes sports documentaries. Do they have staying power? Can annual sports-based titles attract and retain loyal audiences, or will the future be dominated by single-run projects tied to major events and stars?

“This season will be a great test of that premise,” Full Swing executive producer Chad Mumm said in a phone interview.

After Full Swing’s sophomore season’s linear approach, tracking the ongoing LIV Golf vs. PGA Tour heat and building up to a three-episode arc around the Ryder Cup, this year’s offering once again orients around a series of golfers’ individual stories.

“I think casual audiences really couldn’t care less about the kind of pearl clutching of the state of pro golf,” Mumm said. “They just want to meet interesting characters and get a peek inside this, like, crazy traveling circus and sexy lifestyle of pro golf. So we really wanted to be intentional about getting back to that.”

The first episode was the last one finished as the team fine-tuned “our best advertisement,” Mumm said. This year, the debut includes moments from the filming of Happy Gilmore 2. Otherwise, the follow-along doc has plenty of real-life drama from 2024 to spotlight, from Scottie Scheffler’s $100 million year—and shocking arrest—to Rory McIlroy’s reconciliation with his wife after a divorce filing. Mumm also expects viewers to fall for Neal Shipley, the low amateur at the 2024 Masters who played alongside Tiger Woods on Sunday, much as they did with Joel Dahmen two years ago.

“It can be so easy to fall into the trap of needing to be with the best players or feeling like you need to follow the beats of every big win or loss, but what we always talk about with our filmmakers is that it’s character, access and authenticity first,” Netflix VP of sports Gabe Spitzer said in an email. “As each season progresses, it becomes even more important to ask: What will surprise viewers? What will get them talking and keep them coming back?”

The ’Oversaturated’ State of Sports Docs

Six years after the debut of Formula 1: Drive to Survive, no similarly constructed show has matched its impact, though many have tried. Surfing and tennis versions each lasted two seasons. A cycling show built around Tour de France access won’t run past season three. Even Peyton Manning was unable to get the player buy-in necessary for a second season of Quarterback. 

“At some point you worry about audience fatigue; there’s a novelty factor to this amount of access, but I’m hopeful,” Mumm said. “We were sort of in that second wave of shows, and we’ve stuck around a lot longer than a lot of the other ones have.”

F1’s show suffered a viewership dip in 2024. According to Netflix data, Season 6 generated roughly 87 million viewing hours in the first half of last year, while Season 5 surpassed 90 million hours in the same period the year prior. 

Along with increased documentary competition, Max Verstappen’s dominance—winning 13 of the first 16 races in 2023—likely contributed to the lack of enthusiasm for Drive to Survive: Season 6. Season 7, which debuts on Netflix on March 7, will chronicle Verstappen’s fourth straight series title. Full Swing saw close to a 50% drop in viewership time from Season 1 to Season 2 in the first half of each’s release year (at least in part because S2 debuted three weeks further into the calendar year).

Still, the shows appear successful for Netflix. According to data from Parrot Analytics, sports docs generated an estimated $260 million in subscriber revenue globally for the company in the first three quarters of 2024, based on viewer demand for the content, led by $65 million worth of value from the latest season of Drive to Survive. For comparison, ESPN pays a reported $90 million annually for live F1 rights in the U.S. Another comparison? Verstappen pulled in roughly $76 million last year in earnings, on and off the track.

“Outside of Netflix, the genre’s supply share outweighs its subscriber revenue share, suggesting it has become oversaturated,” Parrot analyst Wade Payson-Denney said in an interview. “It’s a crowded field where only a select few like Drive to Survive and Welcome to Wrexham break through to the mainstream.”

2025 Netflix Sports Documentaries to Watch

Recent Netflix release Court of Gold followed men’s basketball stars during the 2024 Olympics, the latest special event series to earn hard-fought attention. America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is set for a second season in 2025, as Netflix emphasizes the entertainment side of sports. Retrospective storytelling also plays a critical role for the service, Spitzer said, with titles including Beckham, Untold (which will return with ‘Volume 5’ in 2025) and The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox, which came out just before the 2024 World Series. 

Netflix’s first MLB follow-along show tracking the Red Sox’s 2024 campaign hits the service on April 8. A yet-to-be-named season-long docuseries focused on the 2024 SEC football season is also due this summer. NBA and NHL shows are coming back to Netflix and Prime Video, respectively, too, as the format seemingly becomes a part of every league’s media strategies.  

Meanwhile, Netflix has graduated to airing the real thing: live sports. Quarterback’s global success presaged Christmas Day NFL action. Upcoming women’s World Cup rights were grabbed after the service released a documentary about the U.S. women’s national soccer team’s performance in 2023. Netflix is also in the conversation for F1 rights in the U.S. starting in 2026. 

“We’re always looking for live events—whether in sports, comedy, or award shows—that excite our members and spark global conversation,” Spitzer said. “If the right opportunity arises in the sports space and checks those boxes, we’ll certainly explore it.”

Documentaries exposed Netflix to the passion of sports fans—and taught leagues about the service’s sway over younger generations. Now it remains to be seen what role the programming will have in a world where Netflix is a serious live sports player. 

Each show must prove its capacity as an engine for entertainment, worthy of time in an increasingly crowded market. Otherwise, an ax awaits. Producers fight to keep their projects alive. Full Swing has not yet announced a potential fourth season renewal.

Hey, maybe there’s an entire docuseries here!

On second thought, there might already be enough to watch.