Manchester City have a new way of connecting fans worldwide
By David Crook
In recent years almost all football clubs have witnessed the growth of fan driven TV channels, designed and owned by fans and initially at least, supporting the clubs to which they are linked.
Many of these famous Youtube Fan TV channels have had staggering growth – Redmen TV has 296K subscribers, United Stand has 271K subscribers and AFTV has 835k subscribers.
The rise of these channels has seen their creators become minor celebrities and has reached the point where mainstream TV sports channels such as Sky have even reached out to these channels for comment in recent months on escalating stories.
The fan channels have become part of the landscape of following a football club.
Manchester City fans have been left without a dedicated fan channel since the demise of the old BlueMoon Rising channel.
In the vacuum a couple of smaller enterprises have taken off – Ian Cheeseman, ex BBC reporter has started his own channel to vlog the games.
He has achieved around 13k subscribers in a little over 12 months which is good going but has now effectively gone in house, and is vlogging and sponsored by Manchester City.
His original content is based around each of the games he attends and his vlogs are initially published on the Manchester City website.
Esteemed Kompany has continued to vlog since the demise of BlueMoon Rising and has a healthy 23K subscribers of his own.
The Esteemed Kompany vlogs are animated, head to camera discussions and give him the opportunity to share his impressive knowledge of Man City youth players .
Of course Man City’s own Youtube Channel has led the way in TV aimed at fans – preferring a free to air model as opposed to the pay TV models of most other large clubs.
The free to air Youtube channel has an impressive 1.4 million subscribers who get to see exclusive behind the scenes footage.
The sheer size of the official Man City channel means that any Fan TV projects are not operating in a vacuum but against a huge well funded competitor, making any rival project difficult to launch.
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It is against that backdrop that Andy and Ray launched Man City Fan TV back in April 2018. It is very early days for this channel but already they have grown to 3.5k subscribers and could realistically break 10k before the season is out – this would be impressive for a totally fan owned account unsupported by sponsorship.
Immediately following the launch, Man City Fan TV was greeted with a mixed response by the City fans.
Many fans feared the club would be turned into a laughing stock believing the content would be similar to the programmes put out on other clubs’ Fan TV channels which tend to focus on the negative perceptions of fans milked for humour by presenters such as Mr DT and Mark Goldbridge.
Some of the existing Fan TV channels from other clubs are notorious for their treatment of individuals but don’t seem to care because it is this kind of confrontation and notoriety which has driven their growth.
We seem to be in age where clicks create pounds and many people don’t care how the clicks are generated.
The fan channels have expanded to so their stars become some kind of Logan Paul minor celebrity existing to endorse products.
In an era where almost anything masquerades as entertainment many football fans thought those fan TV channels tended to reflect the worst of social media – where stupid people were glorified, bullied and laughed at.
But when Andy and Ray set up Man City Fan TV they had very different aims from the outset and the owners were committed not to glorifying the inane but to celebrating the club we all love.
Fighting their way clear of other Fan TV channels from other clubs and the reputations they have, has been a challenge as the Man City Fan TV channel has begun to take off. Here we have a City channel where the presenters and owners are keen to stress they have no intention of becoming stars at all and felt their mission was simply to connect with fans to share their passion.
Connecting Man City fans from around the world has been a real driving ambition for Man City Fan TV and its clear to see how they have created original and interesting content to support this.
In the last week there has been a programme following a Manchester City fan from India and the efforts he has made to watch the team and there are further similar episodes planned from around the world.
The growth of Manchester City Football Club in the last decade has expanded a hungry and dedicated worldwide audience for the club and understanding and interacting with that new audience – connecting it to the die hard fans in England seems a really interesting approach to take.
Man City Fan TV have also provided in depth interviews with City legend David White, given fans a real opportunity to hear from an ex player with a shocking story to tell.
A story which is commendably focused on making improvements now to safeguard children in the future.
Having an increasing selection of varied quality content from a range of different sources seems fantastic to us City fans.
It means I don’t have to moan about the lack of coverage on mainstream channels because I can check out all of the exciting stuff being uploaded daily on Youtube.
I think that’s something we all want so I would encourage all of us to start devouring the range of material out there.
It’s important that we as Manchester City fans try and engage with the development of Man City Fan TV – we need to trust the owners and continue to help them develop interesting and innovative content so that we can all enjoy it for free by subscribing to the channel and watching the videos.
So let’s all get watching!