Baseball can be romantic, too. Not in the familiar setting of an American high-school drama or a sports series, but in a romantic comedy made by an MLB team. As Forbes reported, the Chicago Cubs released Nine Innings to Love, a 17-part TikTok series, on 4 September. Set in the stands at Wrigley Field during a game, it follows two fans. Written by Cubs Productions, the team’s in-house creative department, it was developed by the marketing and communications teams to reach Gen Z and millennial audiences.
Microdramas can draw viewers well beyond the usual audience for sports highlights. According to Digital i, a British company specialising in television and streaming audience measurement, women aged 45 to 54 accounted for 15.7% of views across the YouTube channels of five leading microdrama apps in 2025. Their share of viewing on YouTube as a whole was 7.7%. Men aged 18 to 24, by contrast, accounted for 6% of views on those channels, compared with 13.7% across the platform. The figures offer a sense of who watches these formats, though not who watched the Cubs series. At the football World Cup, TikTok ran a creator programme in which 30 participants followed the fans, stadium culture and life around the tournament without showing the matches. The Cubs have taken a similar approach to fiction. A love story with a nod to #BookTok offers a way into baseball for viewers who might never think to watch a game.
The Cubs produce the series themselves and publish it on their own TikTok account. Its reach, however, depends on the platform and its algorithm. The NFL is looking beyond the field, too. Skydance Sports, a joint venture established with the league and NFL Films in 2022, is executive producer of Holiday Touchdown: A Bears Love Story, the third Hallmark film built around an NFL team, due out on 17 October. The studio has also worked on The Kingdom, a docuseries released by Disney+ and ESPN that marked the first credited project from Foolish Club Studios. Founded by the leadership of the Kansas City Chiefs, Foolish Club Studios has also developed Chasing Goals, a documentary made with Day Zero Productions, Trevor Noah’s production company, and Wavelength. It follows a youth football team in Kansas City made up of refugee athletes. The film was presented at the inaugural Full Tilt Film Festival, held in the city.
Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, completed on Tuesday, has brought the Skydance group into being. The new conglomerate combines CBS, two international streaming services and a portfolio of live sports rights. Stories about teams can become streaming content in their own right or help market the rights to the games. Sometimes, they can do both. The Cubs can decide which stories to tell, but not how TikTok distributes them. Hallmark brings an established audience to its NFL films. Foolish Club Studios develops projects for different buyers, with United Talent Agency representing the company across film, television and media.
Reaching people who do not watch the games is one thing. Getting them to come back is harder. Teams can shape the stories, set the tone and create characters that draw viewers in. Much depends on where the content appears and whether people return. At Wrigley Field, two fans meet in the stands. For the NFL, the stories range from holiday romances to documentaries about a youth football team. The possibilities extend well beyond the games themselves.