Netflix may soon livestream a golf tournament featuring F1 drivers and pro golfers

If you by no means thought that Formula 1 and pro golf might go collectively, Netflix begs to vary. The streaming service is alleged to be in talks to livestream its first ever sporting occasion, a movie star golf tournament featuring F1 drivers and skilled golfers, in line with The Wall Street Journal. It would reportedly function personalities from Full Swing and Drive to Survive, Netflix documentaries that observe F1 drivers and pro golfers. Talks are nonetheless preliminary, in line with the WSJ.

A star golf occasion can be a low-stakes approach for Netflix to work out a format and clear up any technical points that might happen in future dwell sports activities occasions. It famously tousled a livestream of its Love is Blind actuality present, with technical issues inflicting an hour-long outage — although its first dwell stream occasion, a Chris Rock comedy particular, went easily.

The firm may have additionally observed the recognition of golf YouTube channels like Rick Shiels and Bob Does Sports. Those usually function top-echelon execs like Max Homa enjoying rounds and competing with common gamers, trash speaking and swearing like the remainder of us do whereas enjoying golf. An identical format, with F1 drivers and gamers competing but in addition having enjoyable, might attract informal viewers that will in any other case by no means watch golf — very similar to Full Swing did. 

Netflix has been exploring dwell sports activities streaming for greater than a 12 months. It beforehand bid for dwell US streaming rights to Formula 1, however reportedly misplaced out to ESPN. It has additionally supposedly explored bidding on rights for tennis, biking and different lower-profile sports activities. 

Earlier this 12 months, co-CEO Ted Sarandos mentioned “we aren’t anti-sports, we’re pro-profit,” implying that Netflix does not assume the prices for sports activities rights make financial sense. At the identical time, he mentioned the corporate was leaving the likelihood open. Meanwhile, rivals like Amazon Prime Video have streamed dwell sports activities for years from leagues together with the NFL, Major League Baseball, ATP, Premiere League and extra. 

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