Every Current Scripted Sports Show On TV & Streaming
Scripted sports television shows have seen an uptick in popularity in recent years. From the inspiring underdog sincerity of Ted Lasso to the subversive moral complexity of Cobra Kai, TV has proven that the world of sports makes for ripe storytelling ground. What's more, the traditional but arguably tired sports film structure has found new life in episodic series that manage to explore more facets of athletic competition, coaching, and business.
Sports in real life are dramatic stories of their own, bringing a flurry of hope, sadness, anger, and, more than anything, a feeling of triumph. It only makes sense that those high emotions make for riveting stories, as sports movies have become a common staple of feel-good (and sometimes wryly cynical) cinema. However, the Golden Age of television has provided an even more appropriate platform for sports tales, their long-form structure the perfect medium for reflecting the sports seasons that last several weeks, months, and even years.
Television has provided a way to let audiences travel with its heroes through all their ups and downs, bucking the traditional sports movie underdog formula by allowing characters to travel a complex path that is as filled with both triumphant victories and heartbreaking losses. TV has also made it easier to explore all players within the world of sports, whether it be the earnest athletes of Friday Night Lights, the dedicated fans of The League, or the business magnates of Ballers. Sports television still captivates audiences, which explains the genre's evergreen success. Here are all the currently airing sports shows on television available to watch right now.
Sports movies and television shows have traditionally geared towards uplifting stories about a ragtag team of underdogs, but the subject material is often treated with a level of sentimentality that leaves little room for joking around. Not so in the case of Ted Lasso, a feel-good sports series that's also a feel-good comedy. The general plot, about a high school American football coach Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) that gets hired to train an association football club (or as Americans say, soccer club) in the English Premier League, has all the potential to be a cynical riff on sports competition. Instead, Ted Lasso is caring, optimistic, and capable of bringing the best out of everyone who surrounds him. The show is currently airing its second season on Apple TV+ and has brought a swarm of attention to the streaming service.
Sports programming has almost always focused on sports heroes, but Cobra Kai positions its story around a sports villain. The show, which initially premiered on YouTube's short-lived streaming platform YouTube Red but which now is now a Netflix original, is a sequel to the 1984 classic The Karate Kid and its follow-up films. Instead of merely continuing the story of Daniel LaRusso, however, Cobra Kai turns Johnny Lawrence, the antagonist of the original movie, into a sympathetic, complicated anti-heroic protagonist. Therein lies the appeal of the show, which flips the world of The Karate Kid and the traditional sports movie structure on its head. William Zabka, Ralph Macchio, and Martin Kove all reprise their roles, lending the show a true sense of authenticity.
Disney+ has also taken a beloved sports film and altered the dynamics of traditional competition with The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. Despite the name, the Mighty Ducks as a team serve as the skilled antagonistic rivals of the show's true underdogs, the Don't Bothers. Sports hero protagonist Alex Morrow, played by Lauren Graham of Gilmore Girls fame, is a paralegal-turned-hockey coach who tries to help her son after he gets brutally rejected from the Ducks. Emilio Estevez plays his character from the original Mighty Ducks movies to play the down-on-his-luck Gordon Bombay, who finds new life in helping to train the Don't Bothers so they can compete against his former team, now an elite but pompous group.
All American is a story of class struggle and sports triumph based on the life of NFL linebacker Spencer Paysinger, who is creatively involved in the series as a consulting producer. Relative newcomer Daniel Ezra plays Spencer James, whose immense talent as a wide receiver at South Los Angeles' Crenshaw High School lands him a transfer to the much richer, whiter Beverly Hills High School. The show was initially met with low ratings on The CW but became a massive hit when it debuted on Netflix and shows no signs of stopping. All American season 3 premiered in January 2021, while season 4 is right around the corner, set to air in October.
Big Shot has a fairly standard premise for a sports show. The series focuses on a former NCAA basketball coach, played by well-known sitcom and medical drama actor John Stamos, who coaches a team for an all-girls private high school after getting fired for throwing a chair at a referee. Production for the hour-long dramedy ran into numerous COVID-19-related obstacles before finally airing in April of 2021, making the show seem like one of the little teams-that-could that are the center of so many sports stories. So far, there has been no official announcements for a season 2, but considering the show just ended in June, it's still too early to assess viewership.
Sports fever can travel internationally, as South Korea's Racket Boys has proven. The K-drama follows a middle school badminton club as its starry-eyed members try to reach the national level. Badminton is widely popular in Korea, where the country's national governing BKA produces world-class players that play on the global level, so it makes sense that a television show would choose the sport as its subject. Actress Oh No-ra, who is well-known in her native country as part of the cast of the popular satirical dramedy Sky Castle, plays a legendary badminton player who becomes the team's coach. Each episode is available on Netflix after its South Korean premiere.
Sports shows don't always have to be about real-world competition and drama. Adult Swim's Ballmastrz: 9009 brings an intense surrealness to athleticism. The series follows the typical sports structure of a disgraced captain/coach trying to help a team of underdogs rise to the top, only the sport is a post-apocalyptic gladiatorial death match in which the players must kill each other with the ball. The series' creator is Cristy Karacas, who is also one of the minds behind Adult Swim's hyper-violent Superjail!. Although Ballmastrz has a more coherent plot, it's still a bizarre ride aided by the voice work of Natasha Lyonne from Russian Doll and Orange is the New Black.
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