15 Best Sports Documentaries on Netflix

Last Chance U is a documentary series that follows junior college teams every season. 

The docuseries is a tentpole series on Netflix, according to Men’s Health. It shows all the crooks and hooks used by players to get into a respectable football program to follow their dream of becoming an NFL player someday. 

As the name suggests, junior college team players have one last chance and must give their best to advance in their careers. The show’s first two seasons followed athletes at East Mississippi Community College, the second two seasons followed players at Independence Community College, and the last season followed Laney College’s athletes. 

The docuseries was first released on July 29, 2016, and the final season was made available for streaming on July 28, 2020. Take a look at the trailer below before you decide to jump into streaming. 

CounterPunch is a 2017 one-part boxing documentary featured on Netflix. 

The Netflix documentary CounterPunch follows three professional boxers at different career stages. One is a seasoned professional boxer, the second is hopeful about going to the Olympics, and the third has just started his career as a professional boxer.  

If you are to listen to the viewers’ reviews on IMDb, CounterPunch is a solid documentary film that strikes interest in sports due to its presentation. For boxing fans, the documentary ignites depth in the sport and the competing athletes by connecting them with emotions and backstories. 

Last Chance U: Basketball is the second generation of Netflix’s Last Chance U docuseries. 

The second generation follows coaches from the Los Angeles area as they are determined to coach their athletes and prepare them to get into some of the country’s major basketball programs and into NBA someday. 

The documentary series follows coaches John Mosley, Kenneth Hunter, and Rob Robinson as they prepare their players for the season and game. The docuseries first aired on March 10, 2021, with eight episodes of season 1 streaming on the same day. The second season was made available for streaming on December 13, 2022. 

Have a look at the trailer for the series before you make commitments to yourself.

The Playbook is a documentary series about the coaches and not the players. 

The 2020 docuseries featured five great minds behind several successful teams and athletes in 5 episodes. The Playbook featured Doc Rivers, Jill Ellis, José Mourinho, Patrick Mouratoglou, and Dawn Staley. 

Doc Rivers, aka Glenn Anton “Doc” Rivers, is the current head coach of the NBA team Philadelphia 76ers.

Likewise, Jill Ellis is the current head coach of the American soccer team San Diego Wave FC. Similarly, José Mourinho is a Portuguese football manager currently serving as the head coach of Serie A club Roma.

The fourth personality featured on the show is Patrick Mouratoglou, a French Tennis coach. He was the coach for Serena Williams for a decade, from 2012 to 2022. The fifth coach is Dawn Staley, an American basketball coach currently serving South Carolina Gamecocks. 

All the coaches come from different backgrounds and sports but have one thing in common. All five have been champions as a coach and have shaped the careers of several athletes.

The Speed Cubers is a 2020 Netflix documentary on the lives of two Rubik’s Cube-solving champions, Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs. 

The documentary follows friends Max and Feliks as they compete against each other for the title of world champion. However, the documentary is not just about the fierce competition between the two but also their lasting friendship. 

Sue Kim directs the Speed Cubers. Some of the footage for the documentary was shot at the 2019 World Championship of the World Cube Association held in Melbourn, Australia. 

At just 40 minutes long, The Speed Cubers is a sports documentary that can be enjoyed in one afternoon. Here, look at the show’s trailer before you hop onto Netflix. 

The Short Game features eight children from around the world trying their hands at competitive golf. 

The documentary film features children of age seven and eight. The camera crew visited all eight subjects’ homes six months before the 2012 World Championship. 

The majority of the footage in the documentary is shot at the 2012 World Championship. 

The documentary received good reviews from critics. USA Today critic Scott Bowles said the documentary hit “hole-in-one.” 

However, the box-office performance of the documentary film was poor, with just $39,819 collected.

The Last Dance is a ten-part documentary on basketball legend Michael Jordan. 

The documentary mini-series follows Michael Jordan, mainly through his 1997–98 season at Chicago Bulls in NBA. The docuseries also features interviews with several basketball legends and other personalities, including Scottie Pippen, Phil Jackson, Steve Kerr, former president Barack Obama, and many others. 

Similarly, the documentary also features exclusive footage from inside Chicago Bulls, which was captured by a film crew with all access to the facility. The docuseries came together after years of refusal from Michael, but he ultimately agreed in 2016 with Mike Tollin.

Here is a glimpse of the documentary series to help you decide if you would like to watch it now or later today.

The Dawn Wall is unlike any other sports documentary series on this list. 

The Netflix documentary is different because The Dawn Wall follows two rock climbers attempting to climb over 3000 feet of the seemingly impossible The Dawn Wall of El Capitan. 

Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson spent over six years carefully planning for the climb of their lifetime. As the final ascent approaches, the two climbers will spend weeks at the cliff as they are carefully gazed at by world media. However, Tommy must decide between leaving behind his partner and going for the summit or risking his success. 

Here is the trailer for The Dawn Wall to help you decide when you would like to watch the rock-climbing madness. 

Undefeated is a 2011 documentary film about Manassas Tigers, a high school football program in Memphis. 

The documentary follows the underprivileged football team trying to end their losing streak with the help of volunteering football coach Bill Courtney. Bill helps the students on and off the field to leave their mark. 

As seen in the trailer, Bill is seen managing the team as they start fighting with one another. He is also seen giving pep talks to his players as they attempt the one chance to turn around their team and records. The documentary also features interviews with people from the school and the community. 

You can look at the trailer and feel the goosebumps before watching the Oscar-winning documentary film on Netflix. 

The Battered Bastards of Baseball is a sports documentary about Portland Mavericks. 

Mavericks was the only team in the Minor League Baseball playing at  Northwest League without an affiliation with any group in the Major League Baseball. The team was created and owned by actor Bing Russell. 

The team had public tryouts for players, and several hopeful and potential stars from around the country attended the tryouts. The documentary shows how Portland Mavericks and Bing Russell played the sport on their terms. 

The Battered Bastards of Baseball also features interviews with many people related to the team. The documentary is directed by Bing’s grandsons Chapman Way and Maclain Way and features actor Kurt Russell, who once played for the team and served as vice-chairman.

Cheer follows Navarro College Bulldogs Cheer Team as they prepare to compete in National Cheerleading Championship. 

The Netflix docuseries Cheer aired season 1’s six episodes on January 8, 2020, and 9 episodes of season 2 on January 12, 2022. The docuseries follows the cheer team under coach Monica Aldama as they prepare for the National Cheerleading Championship held annually at Daytona Beach, Florida.

The first season episodes focus on five cheer team members as they develop their sports careers. However, the series does not fail to provide a brief history of cheerleading and its development in the United States of America. 

The docuseries returned for the second season with more episodes and even more principal characters as they try to balance their career quite literally while dealing with their personal lives and problems.

Icarus is a 2017 documentary film by Bryan Fogel about the Russian state-sponsored Olympic doping program. 

During his doping experiment to win an amateur cycle racing, Fogel connects with Russian scientist Grigory Rodchenkov. Grigory agrees to help Bryan in his experiment by creating a plan to take banned performance-enhancing supplements in an undetectable way, allowing him to prove the point that the tests were insufficient. 

However, the documentary takes another direction quickly after Rodchenkov confesses to leading a government-sponsored Olympic doping program requiring Icarus to help him come to Los Angeles for his protection. The documentary ends with Grigory in protective custody while Russia still denies the claims of state-sponsored doping programs. 

Here is a trailer if you wish to have a look at it, bonus, Icarus: The Aftermath has already been completed by is yet to be released on Netflix. 

Naomi Osaka is a docuseries created based on two years in the tennis player Naomi Osaka’s life. 

The three-part documentary film takes viewers into the journey of Naomi’s life as she tackles every tricky situation on and off the court. The documentary series is directed by Garrett Bradley, who did not want to make a video version of her Wikipedia page or everything said on media but wanted to take the audience along with Naomi as she transversed her personal life and career. 

The docuseries opens with the pivotal 2018 match between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, where Naomi won the game. However, her win over her long-term idol and the greatest player of the sport came with an asterisk because Williams was penalized by the chair judge turning the game in Naomi’s favor.

She shot to the stars after the match and was an instant celebrity athlete with a massive background of hard work. 

Formula 1: Drive To Survive gives an unprecedented and exclusive peek into Formula One and all the teams competing. 

The docuseries is made in collaboration between Formula One and Netflix and has already released four seasons. The first season took a closer peek into the 2018 World Championship, which was released on March 8, 2019. The second, third, and fourth seasons covered 2019, 2020, and 2021 World Championships and were released on February 28, 2020, March 19, 2021, and March 11, 2022, respectively. 

In season one of the series, Ferrari and Mercedes denied Netflix to cover their teams, but both companies came around with the idea for the following seasons. The docuseries covers not just the team but management at Formula One. Here is a trailer if you are interested. 

Athlete A is a documentary film that follows journalists from The Indianapolis Star as they investigate doctor Larry Nassar. 

The Netflix documentary revolves around the investigation and later conviction of Larry Nassar for his sexual abuse of a number of young female athletes during training and physical examination. 

The documentary film gets its name as ‘Athlete A’ as the principal victim comes forward with the claims Maggie Nichols was referred to as Athlete A at the time of the investigation to protect her identity. 

Athlete A implies Nichols was left out of the 2016 US gymnastics Olympics team because she came forward against doctor Larry Nassar. She later left elite gymnastics and started competing at National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Here is the trailer for the documentary.