Why ‘Break Point’ Broke Down on Netflix

This past Sunday, global icon and Challengers star Zendaya posed for pictures at the Indian Wells tennis tournament with eventual champion Iga Świątek before joining boyfriend Tom Holland to watch 20-year-old phenom Carlos Alcaraz rally from behind to crush Daniil Medvedev in the men’s final. It was truly an incredible weekend for the sport of tennis, but Netflix‘s tennis-focused docuseries Break Point was not there to capture any of it, as the show had been canceled in the days leading up to the tournament. Worse, it didn’t seem like tennis stars or fans were too sad to see the show go. During an Indian Wells press conference, Break Point Season 1 standout Casper Ruud said, “It didn’t catch my eye when I watched it so I actually never watched any of the other episodes.”

Break Point was supposed to be a clear winner for tennis and Netflix. Produced by the same team behind Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Netflix’s reality series widely credited for raising both the worldwide profile and financial fortunes of Formula 1 auto racing, it was intended to give tennis fans exclusive access to their favorite athletes off the court. (Netflix also recently launched the second season of Full Swing, a similarly styled series that’s focused on the world of golf.) As Puck and Parrot Analytics’ Julia Alexander has noted, all of these shows are part of Netflix head Ted Sarandos’s “drama of sports” strategy, which she has explained is “code for sports narratives that tap into fandoms without the costly live rights.” However, in the case of Break Point, the show failed to tap into tennis’s voracious fandom. Instead, key production choices wound up infuriating tennis fans and even created more drama on the tennis court.

After two underwatched seasons, Netflix unceremoniously pulled the plug on Break Point earlier this month. So what went awry? Is it simply that tennis doesn’t mesh well with Netflix? The audiences don’t overlap? If so, then what is there to make of their decision to promptly announce a new 2025 docuseries about tennis superstar Carlos Alcaraz? Why did they stage a super-expensive nothingburger of an exhibition match earlier this month between Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal? Why exactly did Break Point fail to breakthrough with Netflix audiences? What was so broken about Break Point? Well, a lot.

Break Point Was Doomed From The Start

Long before Break Point Seasons 1 and 2 hit Netflix, there should have been cause for concern from a production point of view. Tennis is a global sport full of talented — and, let’s face it, physically attractive and photogenic — athletes brimming with fascinating personalities, but for the last two decades, it’s been dominated by a small handful of titans like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and the Williams sisters. Those icons have topped the rankings, dominated the Grand Slams, and, most importantly, been the faces of tennis. However, none of them participated in Break Point.

Break Point attempted to turn this lack of access to the sport’s best known faces into a positive. If you watched the first season, you’ll know that the hook is supposed to be that those superhuman stars are finally being aged out of the sport. Federer was already retired, Serena Williams was kicking off her retirement tour, injuries continually sidelined Nadal, and Djokovic was barred from competing in the U.S. Open for years because he refused the COVID vaccine. The logic was the time had finally come for a new generation of superstars to rise and Break Point would be on the front lines with their cameras, helping to usher a new generation of stars into the spotlight.

It’s a great concept for a show, but in 2024, it looks like Break Point‘s timing was a smidge off. Many of the athletes profiled in Season 1 wound up struggling in the ensuing seasons, opening the door for younger phenoms like the aforementioned Alcaraz, Coco Gauff, and Jannik Sinner to surge to their first Grand Slam wins. Alcaraz appears in a few interviews, speaking in Spanish with English subtitles, but Gauff and Sinner didn’t participate outside of being caught in the crosshairs of filming. (In fact, one of the best parts of Break Point Season 2 comes when Gauff and fellow rising Gen Z star Ben Shelton rag on series star Frances Tiafoe for his more millennial sense of style.) Break Point Season 2 especially suffers because it definitely feels like the real narrative is happening off screen, giving the viewer a feeling of FOMO rather than exclusive, intimate access.

But perhaps even more concerning than top stars denying Break Point access was the amount of input the ATP and WTA clearly had on the series. You would think that having a major sports organization’s help promoting and producing a show would be a bonus, but it became clear that league interference ensured that Break Point wouldn’t address some of the sport’s most toxic controversies. The organization and the players had to look good in order to sell the sport of tennis. This rendered Break Point toothless as entertainment, and worse, problematic for fans of the sport all too studied on its players’ varying controversies…

Break Point‘s Own Team Made Too Many Unforced Errors

One of the key reasons why many hardcore tennis fans wrote Break Point off from the start came down to the lack of care and attention paid to the sport itself. Sure, Break Point‘s focus is on the athletes’ personal lives, but there were too many instances where clear mistakes were made by the production team capturing what happened on the court.

Iga Świątek participated in Season 1, but opted out of Season 2 after disliking the way the producers portrayed her and her team. She also explained during a recent Indian Wells press conference that she’s seen memes about the show’s poor editing, specifically citing a mistake made capturing a final between Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina. “[Aryna] was serving on deuce and then Elena was returning from advantage side,” Świątek said, referring to a major editing discrepancy. “And I think anybody who knows tennis is going to notice.”

By not nailing the details of the sport, Break Point struggled to prove its authority to tennis fans of both the hardcore and casual variety. Break Point also missed fun opportunities to go deeper, or even address, the silly viral moments that tennis fans bond over on social media. Take for instance, their Season 2 coverage of another final between Świątek and Jessie Pegula. Footage of their Montreal final appears as a sentimental grace note in an episode about Pegula and Maria Sakkari’s determination to keep going in the sport. However, tennis fans — and Tennis.com — remember that match because “Cotton-eyed Joe” mysteriously interrupted play at a tense moment. (Honestly, I would have watched an hour about how that happened! I need answers!)

However, the most controversial, and damning, decision Break Point‘s producers made was the way they covered Alexander Zverev’s return to the sport in 2023 after an injury without mentioning the two disturbing domestic violence allegations that have been leveled at the German player. Before the second season debuted, respected tennis journalist Ben Rothenberg posted a thread on X, aka Twitter, about the episode, calling it “Genuinely shocking stuff.”

Nevermind, just realized that the Netflix BREAK POINT screener embargo ended yesterday.

Not sure if I'll have more time to write about it fully, but here are the basics:

Only six episodes in Season 2, and one is devoted fully to Zverev. No mention of the allegations. None. https://t.co/K8q6E7ibPI

— Ben Rothenberg (@BenRothenberg) January 8, 2024

Rothenberg and many other tennis fans also noted that Zverev’s episode gave rival player Daniil Medvedev the “villain edit.” Medvedev is indeed known for playing psychological games with his opponents on the court, but Zverev’s bitterness towards Medvedev made little narrative sense beyond that. During one segment, Zverev rejoices when Medvedev is knocked out of a tournament, gloating in his confessional, “But at the same time, I do believe in karma.”

In a scathing Slate piece about this very controversy, Rothenberg pointed out a key detail that Break Point omitted: “Medvedev’s wife, Daria, is close friends with Olga Sharypova, the first woman to accuse Zverev of domestic abuse.” Rothenberg also noticed that within days of Sharypova’s October 2020 accusation, Zverev began calling out Daria “Dasha” Medvedev in trophy speeches. Tennis fans consider Medvedev to be extremely devoted to his wife, which makes these coincidences look less like coincidences and more like the real reason Zverev might have had it out for Medvedev. Something that, you know, a docuseries exploring tennis players off the court should, maybe, explore?

Instead, by not addressing the elephant in the room, Break Point ironically created more drama for top players on the court…

“The Netflix Curse”: Break Point Became the Drama on the Court

The ideal docuseries lets viewers feel like they are a proverbial “fly on the wall,” watching what’s going on behind-the-scenes without influencing the subjects themselves. Break Point stunningly failed to do that. Break Point Season 2 is literally called “The Curse,” but it should specifically be called “The Netflix Curse” because tennis fans noticed that many of the players profiled in Season 1 had epically doomed runs at the 2023 Australian Open, which started shortly after the series’ debut. Only Aryna Sabalenka came out unscathed, ultimately winning her first Grand Slam.

Beyond social media chatter, it’s obvious that many tennis players were unhappy with the experience of appearing on the series. Sabalenka, Frances Tiafoe, and Taylor Fritz are among the small handful of Season 1 stars who seemingly opted to continue with the gig for Season 2. Iga Świątek explained, “My appearance in this series kind of caused some hate towards me and my team. So I just wanted to, you know, live my life peacefully and do my job, so that’s why I didn’t get into the second season.”

While Break Point‘s producers might have been able to pivot, following a new crop of players in Season 2, it was an obvious loss that Season 1 participants Stefanos Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa didn’t return. The athletes hard-launched their romance in the time between the 2023 French Open and Wimbledon. Their penchant for swooning over each other and interacting with their own fan page is the stuff reality TV producers’ dreams are made of, but Break Point viewers saw none of it.

Instead, Break Point continued to ruffle even more feathers in the tennis world. When footage, caught by the show’s cameras, of Aryna Sabalenka smashing her racket in frustration after losing the 2023 US Open was leaked, none other than Andy Murray’s mother, tennis coach Judy Murray, dragged the powers that be for sharing the private moment. The footage ultimately did make its way into Break Point Season 2, but by the time the episode debuted in January 2024 — over four months after the incident happened IRL — tennis fans had already moved on.

In fact, Break Point Season 2’s controversial Alexander Zverev episode dominated conversation during the 2024 Australian Open, with Medvedev being asked point blank to comment on it. “Series is not real life,” was his blunt retort. However, tennis fans couldn’t help but notice that Medvedev — who attacked on-court interviews with more of what wrestling fans would term a “baby face” energy than that of a classic heel — seemed to yell, “Karma!” at his box after defeating Zverev in the AO Semi-Finals. Medvedev has since said he was simply saying, “Calma,” which means “quietness” in Italian. Nevertheless, tennis fans still made the connection to Break Point on social media.

Essentially, Break Point created more drama for tennis players than boosts for the sport. So it’s surprising that on the heels of the show’s cancelation, Netflix announced that the sport’s most promising young superstar was teaming up with them on a new docuseries…

Can Carlos Alcaraz Save Tennis for Netflix?

Only days after Break Point‘s cancelation, Netflix Slam Champion Carlos Alcaraz confirmed that he would be making Alcaraz, the Docuseries with the streamer. So if Netflix and tennis make a bad match, why would the streamer bother with a new 2025 docuseries following current #2 men’s player Carlos Alcaraz?

Well, according to Julia Alexander, it could be that Netflix is making this show for non-American markets. Alexander sagely explained to The Ringer’s Matt Belloni on his podcast The Town, “We know that [tennis] isn’t necessarily working in the United States at the level we see with other Netflix titles.”

“The interest in specific sports [on Netflix] is really coming down to a country level,” she said, before explaining that there are very few sports that have the mass global appeal to crack Netflix’s global Top 10. Furthermore, Netflix’s global Top 10 doesn’t always provide insight on how a show is doing on a country by country basis.

Alcaraz, the Docuseries, is being produced by a Spanish production company, Morena Films, who are also working on the Summer 2024 soccer docuseries, La Liga. So it could very well be that Netflix’s tennis content is being targeted for Spain, specifically. Coincidentally, that could also explain the Netflix Slam’s decision to pit Spanish players Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alacaraz against each other. (As it happens, the Netflix Slam was the fourth most watched title in Spain’s Top 10 for the week of February 26 and it only was available for one day that week, the date of the match, March 3.)

The other reason why tennis fans should be cautiously optimistic about the Carlos Alcaraz doc is the fact that in the official announcement, Alacaraz himself said, “People are going to get to know everything you don’t see on a tennis court…I think it’s something very different.”

That suggests that Netflix has learned from the failure of Break Point. They’re working with a new production company, focusing solely on one of the sport’s top players, and seemingly will have far more behind-the-scenes access than the ATP and WTA players provided for Break Point.

Break Point‘s legacy will be a strange one. It might have helped introduce some new fans to the sport, but the drama its production created spilled over onto the court in more bad ways than good. It shows the pitfalls production companies can make attempting to capture what makes sports great and how rare something astonishing, like ESPN’s The Last Dance, truly is.

Break Point might be done, but Netflix clearly hasn’t given up on their dream of capturing the “sports drama” of tennis yet. Here’s hoping Morena Films gets more access to their subject and the nitty gritty details of tennis in Alcaraz, the Docuseries right.