Full Swing

Gabe Spitzer, Netflix's VP of Live Sports and Entertainment, admitted that the streamer has flooded the market with sports documentaries that all start to look the same.

Speaking about shows like Drive to Survive, Quarterback, and Full Swing, Spitzer told Richard Deitsch on his sports media podcast, quote, "I think we probably greenlit too many.

Other people greenlit too many, and it all started to feel like everything was the same." He said a lot of that content became surface level, partly because leagues, teams, and athletes are exerting too much creative control over their own stories.

And Netflix has already started canceling some sports docs and cutting back output as audience interest cools and quality concerns pile up across the industry.

I'm saying something happened like some like some switch flipped in me.

No, it was a Netflix documentary that I watched and it's called Full Swing.

And I realized when watching this documentary that I was like, this sport is really different than like any other sports I grew up watching or like know about.

And I mean, the most obvious is that it's not a team sport.

so there are only a few sports like that the only other one i could think of was tennis can you think of any like solo sports tobogganing

But the outcome that's happened because of everything that's been going on since 2020, I would say, is that more and more people are getting into this game of golf, paying attention.

You know, you look at the full swing that's been on Netflix, you know, and again, a huge new audience, a lot more women, a lot younger audience have switched on Netflix and gone, yeah, that looks quite good.

And then suddenly understand, you know, the life of Justin Thomas or Matt Fitzpatrick.

They didn't know these sort of names before.

That's one of the only shows I've actually ever sat down and watched.

You gotta watch Full Swing.

Yeah,

I

haven't watched Full Swing.

Is that good? I love Full Swing.

I love it.

It's still good.

I'm a fan of his big time.

And a lot of it is from start to finish with the first season of the Netflix full swing documentary.

They had a whole episode on essentially how he just lives in Matt Fitzpatrick's shadow.

They gave him a lot of screen time.

He's a really likable guy.

So it does seem like there's this underdog story that's just been bubbling up since then.

So I think there's a lot of casual Alex Fitzpatrick fans just because they saw that episode of full swing.

You know what? I'll say it all really cool to see.

Yeah.

I mean, I remember seeing his interview on the Netflix, uh, Full Swing or whatever.

Yep.

And I think he broke it down very simply, like, "Well, why, at this point in my career, why would I turn down more money, less golf, chance to spend more time with my family?"

I would think so.

I would think so.

Um, because you do see, and that's where the Full Swing was, was great.

It kind of gives you that peek behind the curtain.

I'd love to see something that is a little more mainstream that shows golf and just like a very cool positive light.

I would love to see like full swing, but like even deeper, you know, like tigers involved.

You go, you know, you spend a long time at some of these events.

I recently watched that show on Apple TV stick.