While Drive to Survive has sped to a successful six seasons on the Netflix platform and been given credit for a surge in interest in motor racing, particular in the US, the same production team has stumbled to a halt with the tennis world, and now The Times of London reports that documentary series Break Point has been cancelled after just two seasons, citing poor ratings and lack of access to the sport’s leading figures.
Everything looked hopeful when the series was first announced by Netflix in January 2022, hot on the heels of the ratings blockbuster Drive to Survive. Nick Kyrgios and Coco Gauff were two of the stars featured in the first season of Break Point, and tennis governing bodies united to help bring the sport to screen. In March 2023, the series was renewed for a second season that was released in January 2024.
However, The Times reports that producers, who enjoyed intimate access to figures on and off the track in Drive to Survive, became frustrated by the hoops they had to jump through to feature tennis’s biggest stars. And the series failed to feature prominently the undoubted biggest story of the tennis world in the last two years, the controversy created by Novak Djokovic’s failed attempt to enter the Australian Open, after refusing to have the Covid vaccine. As a result, the newspaper reports, the series is unlikely to return unless viewing figures improve significantly for the second season.
In better news for Netflix, as well as the continuing success of Drive to Survive, golf has also seen a swing upwards as the cameras of Full Swing cover that sport’s biggest debacle, the ongoing rivalry between the PGA Tour and the LIV circuit.