This time last year, Manchester City fans were getting giddy about a lanky Norwegian sat on a sofa.
Twelve months on from recreating an iconic childhood picture to announce his signing, and on top of breaking the Premier League goal record and winning the Treble, Erling Haaland has provided Blues with possibly the best impersonation of John Stones it is possible to do. The connection between the clip and the pictures will be lost on most, but City Studios - the filming location for both - is becoming ever more important as the club looks to grow its fanbase and revenues.
A small, unassuming block with a floor of 98 square metres next to the first team building, the studio is mentioned in the latest annual report from the club for its flexibility: "filming can be split across five backdrops, turned into a fully bespoke shooting space and there is even space to drive in a car." As more and more people have used the building, studio manager Kimberley Walker-Jones - who moved from a similar position at Liverpool FC TV - has found her calendar busier and busier as internal departments and external companies ask to use the space.
Three different shows is a quiet day, and they range from standard interviews with first-team players and mock interviews with EDS players that coach Brian Barry-Murphy has set up, to a City in the Community safeguarding lesson that interacted with dozens of schools at the same time, and sponsors shoots including dressing up physio beds to create a makeshift spa for Phil Foden to advertise Emirates Palace.
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"A lot of our commercial partners use us to create that content because we're so close to the fans, we understand what they may like or not like and are able to produce great content," explained Gavin Johnson, the group media director for the City Football Group. "We did a three-part series with Gatorade on preparation and recovery from a game; Ruben Dias, Kalvin Philips and Nathan Ake were part of that.
"We have done lots of big productions with Puma. We did quite a simple shoot with Etihad Airways so we had Ilkay [Gundogan], John Stones and Erling. And Erling did Stones's accent and that video did amazing numbers.
"Fans absolutely loved it and our lead partner loves it. Midea turned Studio 1 into a kitchen. It just gives us big flexibility and our partners are really happy and the players love it because it's a proper facility and the fans love it because the production values are better so we can produce better content."
City have pumped in plenty of money to add a quality of staff that would look at home at any other professional broadcaster and create a world-class studio, including recent improvements such as moving the office and gallery from the Etihad to save time and improve communication. And while the satisfaction of sponsors and broadcasters including the Premier League and Sky are satisfying, the club are more interested in the output of the jewel show in their crown: MatchDay Live.
As the name suggests, the programme acts as an accompaniment to every game and features build-up and analysis from a panel of City pundit, as well as interaction with fans from all over the world. Set up during the pandemic as a means of making fans at home feel connected to a game they could not be without, the production values have moved on dramatically since viewers were treated to a view of the floor of Shaun Wright Phillips' house when the phone holding up his Zoom connection fell off the table.
Streaming it for free online rather than as a subscription channel allows the club to be flexible with time. They could broadcast for hours longer than other media around the FA Cup and Champions League finals, but also could end early if there was a drab or negative result that didn't warrant as much comment.
"We are unashamedly pro-City. A broadcaster has a responsibility to appeal to both sides but we don't," said Johnson. "Maybe 80 per cent of what you saw in the Champions League final will have been City and 20 per cent Inter. It's very much a City-based positive role that we play.
"There are many outlets that fans can do but also we have that insider information that maybe not everyone has got so we can give that City bias but with real expertise. Matchday Live goes out on five or six different channels - the website, TikTok, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, the app, - and we are using all of our channels to make sure it goes far and wide.
"It's a huge part of what we do and creates other content - something Shaun Goater or Joleon Lescott say can allow our written team to create something or put it into a podcast. We thought there was a big opportunity to do something that nobody else was doing in the league, the biggest one with matchday output."
Such transparent bias raises questions about how healthy it can be to produce a show that avoids criticism - even if it isn't new (United, for example, have done it for years on MUTV). Just because some people want an echo chamber, how acceptable is it to pander to that?
The reality of the landscape is that social media is awash these days with professionally-produced fan channels spouting the hottest of takes to ensure maximum engagement. Leading broadcasters have also gone in that direction, with a Sky Sports camera on Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville in the Anfield press box to get their instant reactions to Liverpool vs United, while BT happily shared footage of Rio Ferdinand celebrating a Real Madrid goal against City in the Champions League.
Rightly or wrongly, City fans do not feel like they are represented well enough by the subscription TV channels and the club have decided to insert themselves into that void. And, while it is rejected as a comparison by Johnson, it certainly feels as though City have taken advantage of the lack of a viral City fan channel by monopolising that space as well - especially by incorporating some of the most prominent Youtube hosts and podcasters onto their MatchDay Live show.
City aren't competing with BT, Sky or anyone else for every football fan but they are trying to ensure they are the accompaniment to the match for every City fan, and they are happy to pay handsomely for City-specific insight on top of the money ploughed into a professional broadcast studio and production team to do so. Nedum Onuoha, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Steph Houghton were guests alongside host Natalie Pike for the Champions League final in Istanbul, with content from former Blues including Fernandinho and Ali Bernabia to add to the appeal, and enjoyed a record six million views on the show to smash the previous best by 500,000.
As the club grows through its success on the pitch, it is also attempting to grow through its use of media by creating bespoke footage for their various channels. The club recorded 900 million views on content in May (i.e. before the FA Cup or Champions League finals), up from 532 million 12 months ago, when they won the league. A breakdown of their coverage of the title win showed how they tapped into collaborations with present and former players and live-streamed reaction to Arsenal losing to Nottingham Forest in a sign of their flexibility and depth of resources.
A recent study from the CIES Football Observatory puts City in joint-sixth with Liverpool on 131million for social media followers incorporating Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. MatchDay Live has helped the app and Youtube subscriptions soar. Engagement is up 70 per cent across all social channels, and the 24.6m monthly active users on Youtube since July 2022 is comfortably the most in world football (Barcelona are second on 18.8m).
"We want to create something slightly different from what anyone else has done and also we want to focus on what is right for the fans," said Johnson. "The simple thing for us is that anything we do is for the fans.
"Everything is about drawing the curtain back on the club, getting the insight that you can't get from anywhere else, which is the big advantage we've got. We found a niche for ourselves.
"Part of what we've done is build out different expertise. We have a live team and they focus on MatchDay Live , U18s, U21s, women's games and pre-season friendlies and mid-season friendlies.
"I have a dedicated team to producing that live content just as I have a dedicated design team for all of the visual stuff. Can we create great content for our fans which pulls the curtain back on the club?
"Then, can we use content as a mechanism to grow the club and bring in new fans? The core thing is always: what bit of insight or content can we share from our advantageous position which delights our fans? We do see this content as a way to grow this club."
As Sky Sports undergoes a major reshuffle and BT Sport is taken over and rebranded as TNT Sports, they have never faced bigger competition for City matches than from the club itself.
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