Can Everything Be A ‘Media Property?’

Last week’s news that Ryan Reynolds will bolster The Remington Group’s bid to buy the NHL’s Ottawa Senators with a Welcome to Wrexham-style docuseries (should the group buy the team) sounds like a smart move.

The success Reynolds and fellow actor Rob McElhenney have found drumming up interest and positive results for National League (U.K.) soccer club Wrexham since purchasing it has led to a desire to find the next underdog club they could apply the same content and investment model to. Instead of waiting for someone else to mimic the strategy on a larger scale, Reynolds appears ready to apply it to the Senators — another down-on-its-luck team that’s struggled for wins of late.

Should the Remington Group (with Reynolds in the fold) be selected, the Sens automatically become one of the NHL’s most interesting franchises, and a future series on Hulu or another streaming platform makes that even more of a reality. In the process, Reynolds continues to add to his bonafides as a marketing wiz and seemingly cuts off competitors from trying the same methods on another Big Four (MLB/NBA/NFL/NHL) franchise.

But it also begs the question: How much longer can this approach to sports shoulder content really work?

Remember, just 30 years ago, many teams didn’t even have their own websites. And 20 years ago, social media wasn’t really on their radars yet either. In the time since, ESPN’s 30 for 30 series created a new appetite and environment for non-fiction sports storytelling. Social video spurred new channels for producing and sharing narratives around current and past athletes and teams. The advent of regional sports networks (RSNs), league cable networks and streaming services gave birth to even more docuseries-type sports content to give fans deeper looks into what really makes athletes tick.

Add to that, around-the-clock coverage of every league and major college conference, many major college conference teams having their own “plus” content services now, more docuseries across multiple platforms, fictional accounts of actual events (see Winning Time) and just fictional events (Ted Lasso)… is there appetite left for more sports, let alone another Welcome to Wrexham?

The show — and the potential Senators version to follow — largely leans into American viewers’ preference for an underdog story, stemming from the country’s own founding.

But even that can only go so far.

You could argue that hockey (decidedly No. 4 among pro sports in the U.S. — read more about that in TVREV’s “Good Sports” report) wouldn’t be an ideal setting for a docuseries-type comeback if not for the fact that it’s a Canadian team. If the idea was being proposed about the Columbus Blue Jackets or say, Arizona Coyotes (more moribund NHL franchises than Ottawa), there’s a chance this content plan doesn’t have any legs at all.

Even with the potential draw of the Sens’ story, there’s also the challenge of how much time audiences have to tune into these sorts of stories anymore, something already dictating a scale-back in content from giants like Netflix and Disney.

Research from Insider Intelligence shows U.S. adults are projected to watch just under six hours of video (TV and digital) per day this year and next. That’s about the same amount as they did in recent years, too. A survey from betting site Lines.com shares that sports fans watch an average of 10.5 hours of sports content each week, or 1.5 hours per day. But… 76% of those respondents also said they watch less than 10 hours per week. If fans have multiple teams they follow and an interest in related social video content, it’s easy to get to that 10-hour mark rather quickly with games and some digital videos alone.

So is there really a market for much more shoulder content like Welcome to Wrexham?

Whoever bets on the possible Reynolds/Senators follow-up will be convinced there is, pointing to the rising cost of TV sports rights, and their increasing prominence as the primary game in town for networks looking to lure ad dollars. That makes sense, but also ignores the fact that audiences are still fracturing, younger viewers are still harder to attract with sports content, and you need at least casual sports fandom to get people watching content like Wrexham, The Last Dance and similar programs.

With “too much content” becoming a growing problem for networks, digital publishers, leagues, teams and other content owners as it is, this Senators idea could be the last hurrah for the short-lived, TV-fueled sports comeback story era. Especially because it’s unlikely any more will have Reynolds (a key driver for what’s worked well for Wrexham) directly involved.