A golf tournament as a 2 man team sport, with one member an F1 driver, organized and live streamed by Netflix. Nobody asked for it, but Netflix has decided to make this their first ever live streamed sporting event. As an F1 fan I had to check it out. I’ve previously played golf, and last watched it when Tiger Woods was not yet canceled, but have not been interested in it for years. Maybe that is the point, get Golf fans to get excited about F1, and F1 fans potentially excited about Golf, let’s see if it was accomplished later on.
Teams
- Alex Albon & Max Homa
- Carlos Sainz & Justin Thomas
- Lando Norris & Rickie Fowler
- Pierre Gasly & Tony Finau (Replacing Collin Morikawa)
Collin Morikawa couldn’t participate in the event due to a back injury, but he did show up and be part of the event. There were a bunch of different celebrities and sports personalities that showed up during the event.
The commentators were Kay Adams, Joel Dahmen, Marshawn Lynch and Bert Kresicher. A mix of personalities from various sports and a comedian. Sadly none of the presenters were fun to watch, especially Beast Mode and Bert, both were extremely cringe inducing whenever they were on screen. Kay Adams and Joel Dahmen were great when talking about Golf, but their F1 knowledge left more to be desired.
Holes
The “Cup” started with a speed run on the first hole. I’m not exactly sure what was going on, but I think the point was to be a race to get the golf ball into the hole. Everything seemed chaotic, with what looked like Sainz stopping the ball from rolling too far away, that should have been a disqualification, but I guess it was legal?
Hole 2 onwards felt more like a traditional golf, which was what I was expecting to see, everything else was a strange “innovation”.
Hole 5 was a squid game themed hole, called “the challenge hole” with some crazy rules. This felt more like a gimmick than anything new. Another reason to plug a show.
Every hole had a plug to one of Netflix’s shows. Just like any live sporting event, you have ads spots, this time it was all ads about Netflix shows.
Overall Opinion
The Netflix Cup was not one of the best sporting events, but it wasn’t the worst thing either. It was a goofy, chaotic, cringy and confusing experience that was ultimately just entertaining enough to stick through. The event didn’t feel well thought out or well put together, almost like it was a random idea and they tried a bunch of random things picked by throwing darts at a brainstorming cloud.
If I was not a F1 fan, I probably wouldn’t have watched this. But for F1 fans where content has always been somewhat limited, it’s good to see random things like this. For Netflix’s first live stream event, it was not a huge success, but hopefully it was enough for them to try to do this more regularly. Though I hope they put together a better production.
