The Religion of Sports co-founder discusses crafting a focused three-part series, navigating a saturated narrative, and what audiences should take away about legacy, failure, and honesty.
Gotham Chopra has spent more than two decades shaping how we see athletes on screen.
As co-founder of Religion of Sports, the production company he created with Tom Brady and Michael Strahan, he’s built a catalog of projects that frame sports as a window into identity, belief, and consequence.
His latest project, Alex vs. A-Rod, is a three-part HBO Max docuseries that revisits Alex Rodriguez’s rise, fall, and reinvention through the lens of his PED scandal. The series leans on Rodriguez’s own perspective, rarely seen archival footage, and a tight focus on the most tumultuous chapter of his career to explore what happens when a global star has to confront the version of himself the world won’t forget.
Below, Chopra discusses why this story was mapped out the way it was, how Religion of Sports approaches character-driven storytelling, and what he hopes audiences take away from his latest project.
Inside Gotham Chopra’s 3-Part Retelling of the A-Rod Saga
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
BOARDROOM: As an executive producer and co-director, how do you decide how long these projects are going to be? How did you decide Alex vs. A-Rod would be a three-part rollout?
GOTHAM CHOPRA: I think you have an instinct early on if it’s going to be a feature like a self-contained, feature documentary, or a multi-part series. Then there’s also just looking out in the marketplace to see what’s working, what’s not working, and what feels too long. I think it’s hard, harder and harder in a marketplace where you know people have shorter attention spans, so you have to be more selective about what you push out. In general, you want to leave the audience wanting more, so shorter is better.
We were sort of between three episodes, four episodes, maybe out of five episodes, but I think we knew it wasn’t going to be a one-off, you know, too much story there.
Religion of Sports has a signature style — the projects feel intimate, very human-centric, and even a little philosophical. How did that ethos help shape the storytelling in Alex vs. A-Rod compared to your past work?
I love that you said that because I think that’s very much what we try to do. As much as a huge sports fan as I am, it’s always like, think bigger. What’s the bigger mythology here? Why does this matter? If it’s going to take a lot of time and energy from the subject and a lot of time and energy from us, then let’s make it worth it. Let’s say something and contribute to the conversation.
So I think you’re looking for subjects in a way that will speak to that; that have interesting journeys and arcs. I think in the case of someone like Alex, there’s a very public narrative, which is great to work off of. There’s also great archive, like he’s been so documented and all of that, so you’re looking for that. As you get to know a subject and start to talk to them, and you start to be like, oh, that’s interesting, that’s not what I would have expected, or that’s different than the public narrative, you start to unpack it, and great stories come from great characters, and great characters are usually ones that are complicated.
Yes, unfortunately, but fortunately, [Alex] had all of the above, and I saw that early on and started to get excited about it.
Given how much Alex Rodriguez has already been covered in the media, were you ever worried about fatigue or that people might feel like they’ve already seen this story?
Not really, because most of that was at least a decade ago, if not more. Not that he hasn’t been omnipresent in media — he’s on social media and all that — and that is a challenge sometimes now that everybody is on social media and so available.
Scarcity sometimes drives up interest, like, oh yeah, what happened to so-and-so, and that is something you manage. But in general, the stuff that we were going to talk about, which is primarily the PED use and the stuff during his playing career, a lot of people hadn’t forgotten about it, but it hadn’t really been discussed in a long time.
One of the things Alex has talked about very openly is that his motivation was, yeah, my story has been covered a lot, but not by me. I’ve never really spoken about it. He saw this as an opportunity not to set the record straight as much as say, here’s my perspective, here’s what it was. There are great documentaries on the subject, but historically, the ones we’ve done and I like to do are with the subject and from their perspective. That takes time to build a relationship, earn that trust, and make sure that if we’re going to do this, we’re going to be authentic and honest. That takes a while.
You’ve chronicled the inner lives of so many athletes. What about Alex’s story felt different or necessary to tell now, and how did you maintain your creative integrity while telling it?
I’ve had the privilege of working with many great athletes, and there are similarities in the work ethic and the process and what it takes to be great. In Alex’s case, what was different is he screwed up on the most public stage in a big way, and that had a lot to do with how covered it was.
Other athletes make mistakes, but Alex became the poster boy for PED use and a villain in many ways, which contributed to that characterization. I thought that was interesting, and there was a public narrative.
In terms of the integrity of it, I’m a journalist by trade, but documentary making for me is not journalism — it’s storytelling. They share values like authenticity and honesty, but storytelling is different. It’s a series of choices. It’s not following the story wherever it goes. We chose subjects who had a relationship and were characters in Alex’s world, not friends or people who would complement him. We have critics, but they had real interaction. They were there at the time, not commentators or pundits.
When we came to the story, I talked a lot with Alex and my co-director about how this isn’t the story of his life. This is the story of the most important moment of his life on the baseball field. He has a great life now, but we wanted this story to stem from his usage of performance-enhancing drugs. That was the epicenter. We didn’t feel obligated to tell every story or relationship.
Subscribe for the biggest stories in the business of sports and entertainment, daily.
What was it like to decide not to do a biopic and focus on this one timeframe in Alex’s career instead?
I’m a big believer in constraints being a good thing. In the business of storytelling, it’s sprawling, and I’m not going to criticize other people’s work, but when things go on for seven, eight, 10 episodes — and we’ve done them — you’re searching for a story and trying to justify and rationalize a way to fill up the space.
This is good. It requires discipline. Everyone always brought up J. Lo because of his relationship with J. Lo. I’m like, yeah, I get it. It’s interesting and pop culturally relevant, but it’s not relevant to this story because that’s very recent and had nothing to do with his PED usage.
And in storytelling, it’s a terrible expression, but killing babies — you leave it on the cutting room floor. For us, that’s a good thing because you’re always trying to do less is more.
Do you ever feel the urge to go back and do follow-ups with the subjects you’ve worked with, or do you feel pretty fulfilled once a project like this three-part series is complete?
I feel pretty fulfilled. The good news is I’ve — and it’s not a coincidence — built relationships, so I am working on another project with Steph Curry. I’ve worked on several with him, but I would say it’s a different type of story we’re working on. I’ve done multiple projects with Tom Brady, but again, different. And I think one of the things that intrigues me, especially with athletes, is retired athletes or athletes toward the end of their careers: what did they learn on the court, on the field that made them among the all-time greats?
What was the process for doing that, and are they able to take those learnings into the next chapter? Alex is my age. He’s 50 years old. He has a long life hopefully ahead of him, and can those qualities that made him — and even those failings that defined his career on the field — can he bring them now? And so far he has. He’s been really successful, and can they help him?
I think that’s an interesting terrain for storytelling, and we’ve done a little bit of that. If you come away feeling like, oh man, there’s more we could do, that’s probably a good thing. Doesn’t mean you should, but then it’s been a success.
When audiences finish watching Alex vs. A-Rod, what do you hope they understand about fame, failure, and self-reinvention?
For Alex and a lot of athletes, this applies: the things he accomplished on the field are not particularly relatable. He has 696 home runs. He’s won with or without the steroids. He is one of the greatest athletes of his generation, certainly one of the all-time great baseball players, but off the field, he’s human.
He’s a human being, and in many ways, that makes his accomplishments, failures, and comeback more special because he’s just like us. We all make mistakes. We don’t necessarily do it on the most public stage, and where he is right now in terms of his pursuits as an entrepreneur and as a father, he takes that really seriously. That was a big motivation for him to go back to the past, be honest and accountable, because he wanted to. The byproduct of showing the world was really showing his daughters, look, I’m being accountable.
One’s a sophomore in college and the other’s a senior in high school, so they’re at a really important age, and these lessons are important. And that was really important to him, and that’s what we can take away. Look, we all screw up, but being accountable, owning your mistakes, learning from them, moving forward — that’s a great virtue.
Read More:
Devin Booker’s Nike Book 2 Moves with Skate Flow and Vintage Car Confidence
Cade Cunningham Dishes to Kevin Durant on Becoming a Dad: ‘That Makes You Grow Up’
Boardroom’s Watchlist: ‘Pluribus’ Leads a Stacked Lineup of Binge-Worthy TV
Inside Range Sports: How Will Funk and Greg Luckman Are Building a Next-Gen Sports Agency
Adam Schefter Sees Potential Risk in Player Prop Bets as NFL Tightens Gambling Rules
