MANCHESTER: Documentaries about sports personalities and teams are nothing new but streaming services are taking these to a new level with extended behind-the scenes series at major teams that have global appeal and can generate valuable data.

It’s all about “more engagement, more insight, and more understanding”, said Tom Glick, chief commercial officer of City Football Group, at the premiere of All or Nothing: Manchester City, an Amazon Prime documentary series that follows the team during its title-winning 2017-18 season, in remarks reported by Campaign.

“It’s an exercise in challenging ourselves to do more for the fans and to do it with a premium video production,” he explained to Marketing Week.

Glick sees such long-form content complementing the more immediate day-to-day work City is already producing in-house for fans and pushing to City TV and YouTube channels, Campaign reported.

And while high quality production values and a compelling story, as the team became the first in the Premier League to amass 100 points in a season, will be an obvious draw for existing fans of the team, Glick pointed to the advantages of working with Amazon, “a global company, with distribution to consumers all around the world” – with the associated potential for sponsorship and merchandise sales.

Rival fans may be less impressed – and Jose Mourinho, manager of city rivals Manchester Utd, criticised the series (without seeing it) as lacking class and respect.

Extending the presence of the Manchester City brand should be good for City Football Group, however, while Amazon can hoover up more data about football fans and tie this in with their e-commerce shopping habits.

The series is the latest in Amazon’s All or Nothing strand which has also featured the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team and America football teams, and earlier this year, Netflix did something similar with First Team: Juventus, a six-part series following the Turin team and its players.

For the future, Glick indicated that the Manchester City Women team could possibly be involved in a similar approach to premium content.

Sourced from Campaign, Marketing Week, Guardian; additional content by WARC staff