In search of greatness: NowThis Sports chronicles Pele, Gretzky and Rice in documentary promo
NowThis Sports announced today that it has teamed up with filmmaker Gabe Polsky for an exclusive content partnership to launch his upcoming sports documentary In Search of Greatness.
NowThis has collaborated with award-winning filmmaker Gabe Polsky on a feature length documentary / Charles Deluvio/Fauzan Saari via Unsplash
Polsky has best been known for award winning documentary Red Army and most recently as an executive producer for National Geographic’s Genius series.
The partnership between Polsky and NowThis has included a 5-part companion digital series on Facebook Watch featuring exclusive footage from the upcoming doc. According to NowThis, each 5-7 minute video utilized unused footage from the doc to help explore how Pele rose to soccer royalty, what Jerry Rice believes makes a complete player, and what Wayne Gretzy considers as the true meaning of greatness.
The partnership has also included red carpet screenings in New York and LA featuring Pele, and Jerry Rice, and Wayne Gretzky among other celebrity athletes. 12 sneak-peek screenings in select locations across the country have also been scheduled.
Polsky said of the project: “In Search of Greatness is my most personal film I set out to explore the true source of greatness in a novel way and tell the story directly from the greatest athletes of all time. NowThis Sports emerged as the ideal content partner to effectively build a social storytelling community around the film’s positive and inspiring messages and help us create a nationwide event-driven movement online and offline around our November 2nd theatrical release.
NowThis president Athan Stephanopoulos added: “Since its launch, NowThis Sports has gone beyond simply covering scores and highlights and focused more on telling the stories of athletes that led to their athletic achievements¨ which is why we couldn’t be more excited to partner with Gabe Polsky to create a new digital series that extends the social conversation around this powerful film.
This project, according to Stephanopoulos, shall reach the sports sites 47 million followers across all its platforms. “Aside from reaching over 70% of all young Americans 18-34 every month online,” he said, “this partnership also allows us to uniquely extend offline to tap our experiential expertise to produce the film’s bicoastal red carpet screenings so fans can meet these sports legends in person.”
In Search of Greatness has been scheduled for release on November 2. The Drum recently spoke with NowThis' chief content officer Tina Exarhos on the future of the still-fledgling media company as well as its take on inclusive stories across the digital space and beyond.