Football and TV collabs of the past have yielded Ted Lasso, All or Nothing and The English Game, and the field is now set for another player.
Sony Pictures Television (SPT) and (CFC), the parent of English Premier League champions Manchester City, have struck a strategic deal to co-develop and produce scripted, non-fiction and kids programs for a global audience.
The plan will incorporate CFC’s global network, sports expertize and access to football talent, facilities and its City Studios production division with SPT’s production smarts. CFC’s main focus is Manchester City, who have dominated English football over the past decade and won the Champions League in a treble-winning season in 2022/23, but also has ownership stakes in New York City FC, Melbourne City, Mumbai City, Troyes, Montevideo City Torque, Lommes, Bahia and Palermo and minorities in several other teams.
Manchester City were the first football team to feature in a Prime Video All or Nothing doc series back in 2018 and saw sold in-house doc, Together: Treble Winners, to Netflix earlier this year. The current crop of players will likely feature in content from the Sony pact — think animated Erling Haaland cartoons, Jack Grealish comedies or Pep Guardiola documentaries.
Projects co-developed by CFG and SPT will be led by industry executive and Raindog Films boss Ged Doherty alongside a bespoke team, who will work with teams across both organisations’ global networks to deliver projects.
Sports docs remain incredibly fertile ground for streamers and broadcasters, with the All or Nothing brand continuing on Amazon, Welcome to Wrexham a breakout hit for Disney+, and The Last Dance and Last Chance U among the most poplar originals from the genre on Netflix. Over on the BBC, the likes of Gods of Snooker have met critical acclaim.
“City Football Group is already a global entertainment company, and this initiative builds on our long-standing track record of innovation in the content space and the growth of City Studios in the last years,” said CFC CEO Ferran Soriano. “We will now take an even more dynamic approach to content production, and we are already developing several scripted and nonfiction series that will delight audiences globally.
“Bringing together the expertise of both CFG and SPT will enable us to create brilliant shows and remain at the forefront of football-led content production.”
For Sony, the deal is its latest partnership with non-traditional TV makers. Last year, it unveiled a pact with The Guardian newspaper to adapt column inches into content.
Wayne Garvie, President, International Production, SPT, said: “Football is the great global game, no other sport produces so many heroes, tears and laughter, joy and heartbreak as football. The basics are always the same: 22 players, two goals, one ball, but the game always evolves and over the last decade City Football Group have become an unprecedented innovator and global leader.
“Our aim is to be part of the next evolution of the game, creating a new generation of innovative football-based entertainment to thrill the world.”
Sony’s stable of production companies includes Left Bank Pictures, which is adapting James Graham’s Gareth Southgate play Dear England for the BBC. It also has a stake in UK-based sports and unscripted production biz Whisper, whose credits include The NFL Show and NFL This Week for the BBC and upcoming Prime Video doc Sven, about former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson.
CFG is majority owned by Newton Investment and Development LLC, which is owned Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed. U.S.-based global technology investment firm Silver Lake has a shareholding of just over 18%.
