‘Drive To Survive’ Producer Box To Box Films Scores Multi-Million Dollar Investment From Bruin Capital

Box to Box Films, the production company behind Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive To Survive, has secured a multi-million dollar investment.

Deadline understands that private equity investor Bruin Capital has invested in the company. It’s not clear what stake Bruin has taken, but it’s believed to be a minority investment.

Box to Box, which is also behind series such as Netflix tennis series Break Point, golf series Full Swing and a new Apple TV+ show about Major League Soccer, is the latest documentary company, with an interest in sports, to score investment.

Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions sold a stake to Peter Chernin’s The North Road Company and Boardwalk Pictures, which is behind Netflix’s NBA series The Long Game and Cheer, sold a stake to investment firm Shamrock Capital.  

Box to Box was founded by Amy and Senna producer James Gay-Rees and Paul Martin, who produced HBO’s Maradona. The pair told Deadline last year about the investment search.

“For a long time, we’ve been growing quite organically. Whenever you get to a certain level, you have that perceived level of success from the outside and you start getting a lot of people asking questions about investment or a sale,” Martin told Deadline. “We just decided that it’s probably worth finding out if there was a partner out there that make sense, or some investment. It’s very early in that process, but we’ve definitely talked to a few people.”

The company has operations in London and LA as well as a presence in Paris, France, with its joint venture Quadbox. Gay-Rees is based in London and Martin is now in LA.

In addition to sports docs, it produced music documentary series 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything and corporate true-crime series Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn, both for Apple.

Bruin Capital was founded in 2015 by George Pyne, who will sit on the Box to Box board. It invests in and acquires global sports and entertainment companies.

It has stakes in Full Swing, a producer of golf simulators, media technology company Deltatre, On Location Experiences, a joint venture with the NFL to deliver sports and entertainment experiences and sports marketing agency Engine Shop.

Pyne was previously President of IMG Sports and Entertainment and was on the board of NASCAR. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell described him as “one of the most influential figures in global sports and entertainment the past 30 years”.