Nike’s Waffle Iron Entertainment:
The Day Sports Stood Still

HBO SPORTS, IMAGINE DOCUMENTARIES, FUQUA FILMS AND WAFFLE IRON ENTERTAINMENT TEAM UP FOR THE DAY SPORTS STOOD STILL, A FEATURE-LENGTH DOCUMENTARY THAT TELLS THE STORY OF THE UNPRECEDENTED SPORTS SHUTDOWN IN MARCH OF 2020 AND THE REMARKABLE TURN OF EVENTS THAT FOLLOWED.

With millions of dedicated fans and the best athletes globally, Nike has one of the biggest potential audiences worldwide. We approached them with a new way to tap into that audience. We are Nike's partner in the creation, inception, and development activity of Nike's new entertainment division, Waffle Iron Entertainment. With a mission to promote the values of sport to every athlete globally, Observatory operates as Nike's virtual team investing in the development, creation, and production of pure entertainment content, not branded content or product placement. 

Our first project under the Waffle Iron Entertainment banner – The Day Sports Stood Still – was in partnership with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment and was sold to HBO. Directed by Antoine Fuqua ("What's My Name | Muhammad Ali"), The Day Sports Stood Still is a feature-length documentary that follows some of the world's best athletes to tell the story of the unprecedented sports shutdown in March of 2020 and the remarkable turn of events that followed.

At the center of the film is the first-person account of the NBA All-Star and the president of the NBA Players Association, Chris Paul. Brought to life through a collection of raw interviews with athletes that detail how profoundly the sports world's pause in the pandemic affected their lives and careers, the documentary features: the NBA's Donovan Mitchell, Danilo Gallinari, Karl-Anthony Towns, team owner Mark Cuban, commissioner Adam Silver, and players association executive director Michele Roberts; MLB's Mookie Betts; the NHL's Ryan Reaves; NFL's Laurent Duvernay-Tardif; Natasha Cloud of the WNBA; LPGA's Michelle Wie West; Dutch soccer player Marten de Roon; and Olympians Daryl Homer and Laurie Hernandez.