Georgia opted out of Netflix’s SEC series. Kirby Smart on if Bulldogs would do it in future
Fans can get a behind-the-scenes look at the 2024 season when Netflix’s “SEC Football: Any Given Saturday,” premieres on Aug. 5.
LSU, Florida, South Carolina, Vanderbilt and Auburn are featured in the promo image for the streaming service’s seven-episode docuseries. But where is Georgia football, the team that won the SEC Championship?
The Bulldogs didn’t open up their program for the series.
“As I understand it, we were not really involved in it,” coach Kirby Smart said on SiriusXM radio at SEC Media Days. “We’re one of the teams that opted out. We’re in it… There were teams that were in it that were playing us that are part of it.”
Smart said athletic departments now are always looking for new revenue streams so taking part in the series offered “another revenue opportunity. The numbers they get, the overseas part. Netflix is the largest producer of content and they’re getting in more homes so it’s a great opportunity for expansion for the SEC. It was very well put together. I’ve been impressed with everything I’ve seen from it.”
Smart said he heard a pitch about the show when given the chance for Georgia to be a part of it. At the time, the producers had already done “Full Swing” focused on pro golf and “Formula 1: Drive to Survive.”
“They were going to do a great job regardless,” Smart said.
Netflix describes the series as capturing “the pressure, pageantry, and pure intensity of SEC football like never before. Viewers will ride along on the team buses, sit in on locker-room speeches, drop in on barbershop banter, and witness the grind it takes to be a D1 athlete in the nation’s most competitive football culture.”
Said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey: “That series goes behind the scenes to really capture what we think is unprecedented footage and personal stories of our coaches, our student-athletes, and our teams throughout last season.”
South Carolina coach Shane Beamer brought up the Netflix series when pumping up the strength of the league.
“Players want to play in the league, coaches want to coach in this league,” he said. “All you have to do is look at the Netflix special that I know is coming out later this year. They chose this league to showcase as well. Obviously they had other conferences that would have loved to have been a part of it; they wanted us. I think that speaks volumes about the power of this league.”
