HBO’s ‘Winning Time’ Is Less About Sports And More About Following Its Sunday Night Formula
The last couple of years felt like decades at times, but you might remember the hype around one of the biggest hit shows of the pandemic’s peak—ESPN and Netflix’s The Last Dance.
With few new releases on TV at the time, the documentary took viewers on a tour of the Chicago Bulls’ 1997-98 season, and more accurately, recounted the history of Michael Jordan’s illustrious time playing for the team. Due to Jordan’s fame, success and intrinsic link to the 1990s (still in the midst of a cultural reassessment today), the series was appealing to audiences of all ages. So much so that the first two episodes — which premiered in April 2020 — combined to be the No. 5 most-watched show on its first night, according to data from VIZIO’s Inscape.
The success of The Last Dance was bound to spur some copycat behavior afterward, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. Like many industries, TV tries to replicate what’s proven to work, and the rapid growth of streaming has forced even more of that mimicry. As audiences become more and more dispersed across the TV landscape, it’s natural to want to present them with something familiar in order to entice or retain their subscription.
One such case of imitation is HBO’s latest Sunday night series, Winning Time chronicling the 1980s “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers teams. It isn’t the only basketball series due out in the coming year, and in fact, isn’t even the only Lakers-specific show coming to screens (Hulu and Apple are also working on separate series). But rather than another time-hopping Last Dance style documentary, Winning Time is a scripted series with a long roster of talented and well-known people both in front of and behind the camera.
So in spite of the natural lines one might draw between this series and the Bulls-themed predecessor, basketball is largely all they have in common. As always, HBO is just using a subject matter (sports, in this case) to follow its own formula for Sunday night prestige TV success.
Winning Time also debuts in a radically different television reality than its predecessor, with live sports and primetime programming all firing on all cylinders right now. What’s more, Winning Time arrives not on basic cable, but HBO’s premium network and streaming service, HBO Max. The audience ratings will be lower, for certain. That fact won’t matter one bit. The better viewership comparison will be how Winning Time fares against previous HBO Sunday night fare, plus whether or not a sports show like this can drive meaningful new subscriber numbers.
If it can, then it’s likely the start of yet another trend for services, which will inevitably attempt to gobble up as many sports-related book rights and untold stories as possible in the coming years. While sports movies (and especially movies about true sporting events) have always had questionable returns at the box office, the limited series approach provides some allure and nature of the epic journey that films lose by trying to stuff the whole tale into 90 minutes or so. Adding recognizable actors and a script has the chance to over-complicate matters, admittedly. But in the right hands (as we may witness with Winning Time), it’s the recipe that helps these sports accounts stand out versus the glut of ESPN documentaries out there — no offense at all to those, either.
Because while ESPN remains a central figure in the sports universe, its success in creating the right mix of shoulder content around live programming on streaming has been debatable thus far. As a result, there’s potential white space there for HBO and others to play, and try to capitalize on the obvious interest in sports beyond the games.
Aside from the actual sports-focused services, streaming has yet to go all-in on sports, so we may just be scratching the surface on how much sports content streaming can produce. For as much as declining live sports audiences are bemoaned, these properties are still the most important programming inventory networks and streaming services have at their disposal. A great way to extend the reach of sports rights beyond the season is to produce documentaries and scripted series like these, in order to keep fans engaged.
This could be of interest for HBO, which even without day-and-date movie releases, has managed to plant itself firmly in third in the so-called “streaming wars” behind Disney and Netflix. And parent company Warner has yet to really fold any of its sports rights into streaming yet, though that’s coming soon with the new U.S. soccer deal that brings games to HBO Max.
So sports might not be at the center of this particular show, but it seems likely to play a larger role for the service going forward. HBO might not have the streaming subscriber bases that Disney and Netflix do, but it also doesn’t have to. The brand has always been associated with premium content for adults, and in that regard, it’s ahead of Apple and Amazon competing in that space.
Further, HBO will get a boost when Discovery and Warner’s merger is finalized. So its place in third (but first among its primary competitors) should be even more solidified when the new Warner Bros. Discovery creates some sort of bundle between HBO Max and Discovery+.
The most interesting thing with Winning Time will be if the show simply does a great job giving HBO’s existing subscribers the sort of programming they already like watching, or if the Lakers focus is able to attract new audiences (basketball fans, NBA fans and/or Lakers fans) to the service.
We won’t know that answer for a while. But even if Winning Time just winds up being sports fare for HBO’s typical audience, that doesn’t hurt its standing in the ongoing streaming wars. Its clearly done the work to be a core service for consumers evaluating their entertainment budgets and where streaming subscriptions fit in. The only way HBO can truly fail with a show like this is if it’s truly bad television — something that seems unlikely given its extensive track record. With that in mind, the company should just keep shooting its shot.
