Man City landmark deal with Netflix could hint at Blue future

Usually when City Studios is mentioned, it relates to the physical building.

Studio 1 is an unassuming block purpose-built at the City Football Academy smack bang next to the first-team building, and has become a hub for all manner of activity across the club. Sponsors use it for promotional shoots, first-team interviews and signings are often shot there. It is the base for City's Matchday Live shows, the unashamedly pro-City coverage for fans looking for alternative coverage.

"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," Gavin Johnson, the group media director for the City Football Group, told the Manchester Evening News in June last year. "The simple thing for us is that anything we do is for the fans.

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"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."

That is true, but some of the most valuable work done by City Studios is anything but niche as they have tapped into the increasing need for sporting audiences to be taken behind the curtain of what is going on. Having produced Inside City videos for their YouTube channel for years documenting events through the week at the club, for the last few years the Blues have had cameramen inside the dressing room following Pep Guardiola and his first team.

Amazon paid big money for that access in 2017 and various streaming channels and companies have done similar for different teams and