Dick’s Sporting Goods is launching its own in-house entertainment studio to get closer to sports fans with original unscripted series to fuel their own athletic passions.
Cookie Jar & A Dream Studios, a new content and production studio to lean into unscripted sports themed series, follows the retailer using Hollywood production partners and filmmakers to tell stories through the lens of sport, starting in 2014.
“Dick’s believes that sports have the power to change lives. And we’ve seen through our work how true that is for so many who have excelled, triumphed against the odds, and been defeated in sport. There are so many incredible and inspiring human stories that deserve to be told, and we could not be more excited to showcase how individuals, teams and communities are shaping sport, bringing people together and unifying and building communities for thousands,” said Mark Rooks, vp of Creative, Entertainment & Sponsorships at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Interest in sports-themed programming around athletes at the top of their game has grown with Netflix series like Formula One: Drive to Survive and ESPN‘s 30 for 30 documentary series. Retailers that traditionally advertised their wares on live games now look to original scripted and unscripted series in the hope consumers may embrace new brands or products through TV content they view in the streaming era.
Over the last decade, Dick’s Sporting Goods has produced five feature-length movies and ten short or episodic documentaries. The first feature doc was We Could Be King, which earned an Emmy Award for outstanding sports documentary.
A second Sports Emmy came with The Turnaround, a documentary about Philadelphia Phillies’ superfan Jon McCann, who inspired a 2023 standing ovation for Phillies shortstop Trea Turner that turned the team’s season round.
Upcoming projects from Cookie Jar & A Dream Studios include Big Dreams: The Little League World Series 2024, an ESPN documentary to bow Aug. 12 and centered on the iconic American youth sporting event. The film is produced in partnership with Imagine Entertainment and MLB Studios.
“Big Dreams is a great example of the kind of projects Cookie Jar & A Dream Studios aims to produce. Being able to share big sports moments with fans is something that drives our team, and we look at the upcoming years with great excitement as we know there will be so many unforgettable stories deserving of the spotlight,” Rebecca Covington, senior director, creative production at Dick’s Sporting Goods said in a statement.
The name of the studio, Cookie Jar & A Dream, is inspired by the company founder Dick Stack in 1948 and aged 18-year-old borrowed $300 in savings from his grandmother’s cookie jar to open a bait-and-tackle shop in Binghamton, New York.
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