On a new edition of the Footballco Business Podcast, Gavin Johnson, Media Director at City Football Group, and Graham Belshaw, Head of Live Content for Manchester City, came onto the show to discuss the role of City Studios in the club's video content.
The show covered the club’s branded and fan-first video content strategies, focusing on Manchester City’s Match Day Live show and the recently released documentary series Together: Treble Winners.
When asked about the decision to bring Together: Treble Winners to Netflix, rather than YouTube, a deal that was reported to be seven figures in size, Johnson said: "I'm a big fan of YouTube. YouTube is great. I think what we're getting with Netflix is that obviously, we're getting those multiple homes, and the product will sit there.
"If you go into your app now, you and the 250-260 million homes across the globe can see the trailer for Netflix, which is pushed into people's apps on their iPads, on their phones, on their smart TVs.
Getty Images"So it gives us big scale across the globe. And we're working really closely with Netflix's marketing team in terms of how we present it to make sure as many people know about it."
Of those 250-260m fans Johnson references, very few will be City fans. But, according to Johnson, great stories go further than club alliances.
"The successes we have had come from thinking 'what will City fans think, what will our passionate fans think?' We get that right, everything else takes care of itself.
"Football is very, very tribal. But what we see is if you produce great content, you pull that curtain on a club, you pull back the curtain on the personalities, the sacrifices they make, the humour that they have between them, what really goes on in the dressing room... It resonates actually beyond City fans.
"Ironically, even though the City fans are the main thing that we care about, it actually transcends beyond that because we have such expertise of the storytellers and the access that we have."
While Johnson has a point, drama and jeopardy often fuel great stories. With City being so dominant, does this rob a series like Together: Treble Winners of any sense of drama?
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Getty"There are lots of personalities in there and we focus on that. It's primarily the players that we focus on, every player is heavily media-trained, every player does multiple interviews. What we try to do is we try to get under the skin of that a little bit.
"We get a lot of time with the players where they're a bit more relaxed and because of the relationships we've got and the trust that they have in us, they open up, but also when you see stuff in the dressing room.
"It's raw emotion as well. And yes, as much as you have a bit of a giveaway in the title of Treble Winners, the story is extraordinary. I'm privileged to watch the whole of the edit and then the final versions.
"I can't tell you how good it is. It is extraordinary. We have footage from the Real Madrid game at home, which is probably, I think. probably the best and most iconic Manchester City performance ever. We have footage of Pep's halftime team talk in Istanbul. I can't tell you how good it is. It is extraordinary. It is the best football output ever seen."
To hear more about the City Studios and Manchester City’s content strategies, click here or listen to the full podcast below.