Djokovic, who was tricked in Australia, did not expect that his misfortune would "add color" to Netflix's new project. Recently, Netflix, who has previously tasted the sweetness in the field of sports documentaries, has extended its tentacles to the field of tennis and will launch a tennis documentary program, and the starting point of this documentary filming is this year's Australian Open.
Although event and sports documentaries are not an emerging market, due to the rapid development of streaming media platforms, this form of content has become popular again, and betting on athletes' documentaries has become the general trend of video platforms. In 2019, video giant Netflix made a Formula 1 racing documentary called Drive to Survive. The documentary was well received after its broadcast, and the fourth season is currently being produced soon, and the first season has a douban rating of 9.5 points.
After the F1 documentary became popular, Netflix also took advantage of the victory to make a golf documentary focusing on the PGA Tour, and 22 PGA professional golfers have decided to participate in the documentary, and the Players Championship, fedex Cup, and four Grand Slam events - the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and the British Open will appear in the documentary.
Netflix's entry into the tennis circuit this time can be seen as a continuation of its previous successes. The tennis documentary will use the original team of "Race to Win", which is still produced by Box to Box, which has previously filmed and produced the documentary of Ronaldo and F1 legend Ayrton Senna, whose professional ability is favored by Netflix, and James Gay Rees, the hero of the "Fast and Win" project, will also return as the executive producer of the new documentary. Interestingly, the four grand slams of tennis, which are usually not "not dealt with", have rarely maintained consistency this time, and they all said that they would "give the green light" for the project shooting.
After the success of Jordan's documentaries The Last Dance and The Race to Win, Netflix's appetite for sports seems to have grown in recent years, with two solo documentaries by tennis player Naomi Osaka and rugby player Colin Kaepernick in 2021. Not only that, but Netflix also seems to be interested in entering the field of live sports, and the company's CEO Reed Hastings said that it is even possible to chase the rights to F1 events if conditions permit.
In the case of Race for Speed, sports documentaries are feeding back on sports, and "Race to Win" has largely boosted F1's global popularity, especially in the United States, with F1's social media engagement on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube growing by 99% year-on-year in 2020, ranking first among all sports leagues.
Former world number one Murray in men's tennis was very enthusiastic about the documentary, and he himself is a beneficiary of such documentaries. In 2019, Amazon launched Andy Murray: Reborn, a documentary that documents its comeback from injury, "I'm open to documentaries like this because they can drive tennis." Murray believes that Netflix's tennis documentary is expected to increase the popularity of tennis in the same way that "Race to Win" drives motorsport, but only if the film crew has enough trust from athletes.
At present, the film crew of this tennis documentary has begun filming footage at the Australian Open. This Australian Open has become the focus of the world due to the Deyo vaccine incident, and the plot of the series is comparable to the twists and turns, and it will undoubtedly become the focus of the documentary.
According to local regulations in Australia, athletes entering the competition must receive a medical exemption provided by the local medical team if they are not vaccinated, otherwise they will be banned from entering the country. Medical exemptions include a number of exemptions, such as major surgery or hospital admission due to serious illness and less than 6 months since infection with the new crown virus, and those who meet the conditions can be granted medical exemptions even if they have not been vaccinated. Previously, Deyo applied for a medical exemption and obtained permission from the local Victorian government where the Australian Open was held. When many people thought that Deyo had passed the customs smoothly, no one expected that the twists and turns of the event had just begun.
Australians have experienced a number of strict lockdowns in the past two years, so the Decision of the Victorian Government and the Australian Open to grant Djokovic medical exemptions has caused public resentment as soon as it was announced, and the Djokovic incident has become a punching bag for long-suppressed Australians. On the evening of January 5, after Deyo landed in Melbourne, the Australian immigration authorities did not buy the "medical exemption" they held, and Deyo was interrogated and detained by the Australian border department that night. The next day, Djokovic's visa was cancelled and he was taken to the Park Hotel, which was originally a four-star hotel but has been a refugee shelter since 2020 and has become an "internet celebrity" for providing moldy food and fires, and Deyo has also found bugs in his hotel room.
On 10 January, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia revoked the decision to cancel the Djokovic visa on grounds of procedural fairness, and at the hearing, Deyo admitted that he was infected with the new crown virus in December last year, which also complied with the relevant provisions of the medical exemption, and the Djokovic visa was also recognized.
Deyo goes to the hearing.
But when everyone thought that the dust had settled on the incident, on January 12, Australia CNN revealed that Deyo had checked the option that did not conform to the facts in the "travel statement" submitted at the time of entry, concealing his travel information before arriving in Australia. Although Deyo later stated that he was not deliberately concealing the report, but that the team staff had made a mistake in filling out the report. However, on the 14th, Australian Immigration Minister Alex Hawke still used his personal power to decide to cancel Djokovic's visa. Deyo expressed dissatisfaction and filed an appeal, but on the 16th, the federal court declared Deyo lost, and the incident ended with Deyo's repatriation.
More interestingly, Deyo is also the majority shareholder of the Danish biotechnology company QuantBioRes, which bought 80% of QuantBioRes in 2020 and is the controlling shareholder of the company, QuantBioRes has been studying the inactivation mechanism of the new crown virus since 2020, trying to block the infection of the new crown virus on the human body through a peptide.
The ups and downs of the Deyo vaccine incident have provided quite a lot of material for Netflix's documentary, and this tennis version of "Race to Win" is currently scheduled to be broadcast in 2023, and the documentary is also expected to replicate the glory of "Speed To Win".
Extended Reading: