Manchester City FC have sold the story of last season’s historic Treble campaign to Netflix for ‘a seven-figure sum’ as Pep Guardiola’s side currently attempt to repeat the feat this May.
The club had a camera crew embedded with the first team squad last year as Pep Guardiola and his first team made history by winning the Premier League, FA Cup, and Champions League. Cameras rolled when star striker Erling Haaland arrived at the Etihad, during preseason in the US, and through to the club’s unforgettable first Champions League Final victory in Istanbul.
Although the footage was initially packaged together by the club’s in-house production company, City Studios, and even advertised last year on the club’s in-house City TV channel, as were previous in-house docuseries on the 2020/21 and 2021/22 campaigns that City TV had screened, there was significant interest from external companies in buying the footage for their own platform. The ads promptly disappeared, leaving subscribing Blue households wondering where the hotly anticipated show had gone.
That mystery appears to now be solved, with Netflix due to make the full series ‘Together: Treble Winners’ available in over 200 countries across the globe from April 2. A trailer is expected to be released as early as this week, and tedious supporters of other clubs are expected to start accusing the deal of being a new example of flouting Financial Fair Play by last week. The doc will be dubbed or sub-titled for various different markets.
Nuria Tarre, chief marketing and experience officer at City Football Group, said in a statement: “Manchester City has an innovative and industry leading approach centred around our in- house creative and production hub, City Studios, and it is testament to the talent and hard work of the team that the latest documentary series will be released on Netflix.
“The club was the first to allow cameras behind the scenes back in 2018 with All or Nothing and over the last four years we’ve had an embedded crew following our team every season to create the best, exclusive content that isn’t usually shown in football. Today’s announcement is the next step in our journey as one of the leading global sports entertainment organisations and we hope our fans and everyone around the world enjoys.
Tarre was referring to City’s previous deal with Amazon to film the All or Nothing documentary in the 2017/18 ‘Centurion’ season that followed the Blues as they broke a hatful of Premier League records and became the only team to reach 100 points in a single campaign.
City have now broken new ground once again – they are believed to be the first club to have one of their own in-house features picked up by a global streamer, and are the first Premier League team to land a show on Netflix. Previous football dabblings from the streamer have focused on individuals like David Beckham or, in the case of Sunderland ‘Til I Die, a Championship team.
An earlier attempt to win over audiences was made with 2010’s Blue Moon Rising, documenting the club’s 2009/10 season, the first full season following the club’s big-money Abu Dhabi takeover. Unfortunately the team ended that season empty handed under Roberto Mancini, which may have turned all but die-hard fans off. Nonetheless, the film did have a lavish premier at Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace Hotel attended by local supporters, and also spent 10 weeks in the UK DVD chart top 10.
