Religion of Sports, the sports production studio founded by Tom Brady, Gotham Chopra and Michael Strahan, is entering a new arena.
The Santa Monica-based media company launched in 2017 to create sports-focused original contentâprimarily documentaries for a number of distribution channels including Apple TV+ ESPN and Fox Sports. After six years, Religion of Sports is ready to expand into a European market with the purchase of Jiva Maya, a United Kingdom-based production house that writer and director Manish Pandey founded three years ago.
Consumption of sports content varies by region, and Religion of Sports is keen to expand its programming to cover more games that arenât as popular in the U.S., like cricket, soccer and motorsport racing. Pandey is known for his motorsport documentaries in Europe; he won a BAFTA for best documentary film in 2012 for his work on âSenna,â a film about championship Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna.
Religion of Sports chief executive Ameeth Sankaran told dot.LA his company previously invested in Pandeyâs company before buying it but wouldnât disclose terms of the dealâwhich will see Jiva Maya retain its branding, but become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Religion of Sports.
Sankaran said he met Pandey about two years ago and backed his motorsport docuseries âLucky!â which was a trial run to gauge demand for sports content in the E.U. and U.K.
âWe believe that the market is going to grow in that Europe and Asia over time will follow what we see in the U.S.,â Sankaran said. He added that he felt that the way Pandey views storytelling is similar to Religion of Sportsâ approach: focused on stories around dynamic, popular individual athletes and personalities who can anchor the content. Some recent examples of this include a docuseries on Olympic gymnast Simone Biles called âSimone Vs. Herself,â a show about Steph Curry called âStephen Vs. The Gameâ and a series about Tom Bradyâs journey to the 2017 Super Bowl called âTom Vs. Time.â
The company has also produced content for major networks, including an interview special with Major League Baseball pitching star Shohei Ohtani called âSearching for Shoheiâ and âHeadstrong,â a series about athletesâ mental health that aired on NBC Sports regional networks in 2019.
Instead of viewing itself as a competitor to major sports networks which also pump out their own content, Sankaran said he sees them more as partners.
âWe get a lot of inbound now from networks and our partners [and] it might just be them [bringing] some athlete or team or ideas to us saying we want to collaborate, tell the story around this athlete, or this town,â Sankaran said. âWhen we lean into premium storytelling and unscripted, that has been the right place [for us].â
Religion of Sports has raised $66 million to date, most recently a $50 million Series B last July that was led by Shamrock Capital and featured investment from Elysian Park Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Sankaran said that in terms of revenue growth, thereâs âmore and more demand for our core businessâ of originally produced sports content. Just look at Ben Affleckâs âAir,â âThe Last Dance,â âFree Solo,â and âAthlete A.â Not to mention, a freediving documentary called âThe Deepest Breathâ from Netflix that debuted at Sundance last December.
The rise in documentariesâ popularity could be traced to the concurrent increase in streaming users, Sankaran theorized. âI do think it traces back to the growth of streaming, and being able to make the world â especially with Netflix â much more expansive,â he said. Adding that, âunscripted documentary filmmaking has just exploded.â
- Why Sports Fans Are NFT Early Adopters âș
- Elysian Park Ventures Co-Founder Cole Van Nice Invests In the Future of Sports âș
- Tom Bradyâs Religion of Sports Raises $50M, Plots Expansion Beyond Sports âș