Come Fly with Me
4.27.20 | Colleen Madden
I miss sports. A lot. I miss watching my kids play sports, I miss coaching them, I miss watching professionals play sports, both in person and on TV. That said, I’m going to lay my cards on the table. I don’t care about the NFL draft. I didn’t watch or care about it before social distancing, and being stuck at home with no sports didn’t change my behavior one bit.
So, I was not one of the 15 million + people that tuned into the draft this past weekend [1]. I had something better to watch: The Last Dance. For sports fans, especially Gen X sports fans, The Last Dance is the new must-see TV. The 10-part ESPN documentary follows the Chicago Bulls as they sought their 6th and final championship title during the 1997-98 season. ESPN is releasing two episodes at a time every Sunday evening, and there is no way we would miss it (even if we actually had something to do). It has all of the elements that make for great TV: never-before-seen footage, a cast of characters, controversy, and above all, what many consider one of the greatest dynasties in sports.
For many in my generation, The Last Dance is nostalgia city. We grew up idolizing Michael Jordan. We had his posters on our walls, we devoured our Michael Jordan: Come Fly with Me VHS tape, we wished for Air Jordans. We wanted to be like Mike. For me, it’s also personal. My mom coached basketball for over two decades, so I was literally raised in a gym. Now my husband and I are watching the documentary series with our hoops-obsessed son, and it’s special to be able to share a part of our childhood with him.
While The Last Dance brings back all the feels, it also excels at storytelling. The documentary is over 20 years in the making, and the in-depth interviews feature nearly all of the 1990s Bulls, a cast of sportswriters, and not one but two former U.S. Presidents (Barack Obama is hilariously identified as “Former Chicago Resident”). There are several bombshells in every episode, and enough drama to make even non-sports fans stay tuned. ESPN is reporting that over 6.1 million people watched the first two parts in the series, their highest viewership ever for a documentary [2].
The Last Dance is also innovative from an advertising standpoint. State Farm’s commercials featuring ESPN anchor Kenny Mayne are gaining headlines themselves, taking footage from the 1990s and splicing in Kenny’s mouth and voice to make it seem as if he is predicting the future in which this documentary exists. Apparently, the ad was born out of necessity. ESPN moved up the launch of the documentary amidst the lack of sports content due to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving State Farm 48-hours to make the ad [3]. In a time when many studios are shut down and advertisers have to get creative, necessity is driving innovation.
Many of us are looking to fill the vacuum of live sports, and for this basketball-loving Gen-Xer, The Last Dance is just what I needed. I still miss sports and very much look forward to the day we are able to catch a live game. But for now, I can’t wait until next Sunday.
Sources:
[1] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/350581/virtual-nfl-draft-grows-37-to-156-million-viewer.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=118144&hashid=AOXMUgWCSa6nc2sp4NFbTw
[2] https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/29076940/last-dance-averages-61m-viewers-premiere-episodes-wnba-draft-most-watched-16-years
[3] https://www.multichannel.com/news/advanced-advertising-last-dance-shows-disney-agility