Football clubs used to sell sponsorship. Now they sell media.
As digital channels expand and fan behaviour shifts, City Football Group, which owns Manchester City among a raft of other global teams, is building a content and distribution ecosystem designed to drive engagement at scale — and create new commercial opportunities beyond the pitch.
George Duncan, Head of Commercial Media at the firm’s City Studios media unit, explains how the model is evolving.
How is City Football Group evolving its commercial media strategy beyond traditional sponsorship?
Firstly, the club’s sponsorship and media strategies are distinct approaches – connected, but different.
From a media perspective, we focus on growing meaningful interactions and Monthly Active Users across various channels, including owned and operated platforms.
High-quality creative output from City Studios that entertains fans is a core part of enabling this growth, for both organic and branded content.
The team I oversee, “Commercial Media,” plays a significant role in identifying innovative new platforms and publishers to host such content, as well as developing new assets for our brand partners. This is a broad example of the intersection between the sponsorship approach and the group’s media strategy.
What role does media now play in the overall commercial model for a global sports organisation?
Significant and growing. Sports rights holders have always offered, and continue to offer, landmark offline assets (such as LED perimeter boards that reach millions via TV broadcasts) that drive substantial media value. It’s a great canvas for both brand fame and affinity.
However, inventory supply is finite, as matches last only 90+ minutes. Digital media, by contrast, represents a varied and plentiful range of opportunities that rights holders can offer to brands without the same supply restrictions.
Advancements in data, technology, and creative upskilling are creating space for new rights and assets to emerge.
That said, this is not simply a volume play –value and quality are essential to drive meaningful returns for both brands and rights holders.
With such a large global fanbase, how are you using data to better understand and segment audiences?
Personalising digital fan journeys, rewards, and experiences based on known data, makes communication more relevant at an individual level.
We’re also informing business decisions using live or near real-time fan data. This is complemented by qualitative research and a strong understanding of key audiences across focus markets, supported by core market segmentation work.
Through utilising enrichment tools to group first-party fan data into “in-market” segments for brand partners, we’re enabling more relevant communications across both organic and paid channels.
Can you share an example of a campaign or activation that delivered strong media value or innovation?
A major output from the club’s creative agency, City Studios, was the award winning “Beyond Borders” campaign for our partner, Etihad Airways.
City Studios set out to do something no Premier League club had done before: use official player-tracking data to transform real match moments into immersive, destination-themed virtual experiences.
City Studios recreated iconic goals from the 2024/25 season within virtual interpretations of Etihad’s newest Asian locations. The ambition was to create branded content that football fans would actively want to watch, while authentically showcasing each destination.
Using skeletal tracking data to augment match highlights, iconic City goals were recreated frame by frame in each location, using 3D player avatars and dynamic camera angles to blend elite football performance with travel storytelling.
The result was a series of five social-first films that felt unmistakably Manchester City. Fans didn’t just watch – they recognised the goals and engaged at scale.
Across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, X and Threads, the campaign delivered 63 million reach, 81 million impressions and 75 million views, generating over 2.1 million engagements and more than 1,600 days of watch time.
How is the growth of owned and operated channels changing the value proposition for advertisers?
Firstly, owned and operated (O&O) channels are incredibly important for rights holders. Engagement and interaction create a positive experience for fans, and there is a strong correlation between site or app dwell time and conversion to key revenue streams.
In the sponsorship world, O&O tends to be a closed shop for brand partners, who benefit from the loyalty and engagement of fans within this environment.
However, scaling O&O is more challenging than ever. Generative search and LLMs allow information to be gathered one step prior to visiting a website or app, meaning an additional click is often no longer required.
This is where experiences and rewards become critical, giving fans a compelling reason to repeatedly return to owned platforms for something they cannot access elsewhere.
Which platforms or formats are currently delivering the strongest engagement for fans
Social media provides a strong backbone for engagement in terms of accessibility, two-way interaction, and sheer scale. However, the media landscape is highly fragmented (fragmentation is up 60% in the last 10 years according to the IPA), with different cohorts exhibiting distinct consumption patterns.
It is therefore vital to build a media ecosystem that reflects this fragmentation. This includes growing our presence on youth-focused platforms (such as Roblox), developing a connected TV (CTV) offering, driving web and app user growth, and strengthening third-party partnerships.
Alongside this, continuing to engage our 200m+ fans across social media remains critically important.
How do you approach short-form, social and creator-led content within your commercial media mix?
As an agency, we apply creative principles and philosophies to generate ideas with the potential to extend far beyond our owned channels. We aim to make our short-form content relevant to both football fans and broader audiences, and – when branded – a clear brand narrative is essential to deliver against the objectives of the brief.
Influencers can play a significant role, both in driving the appeal and fame of the content and in expanding audience reach. Extending beyond our owned channels into new audiences is a key reason why we have been the most viewed club across social media in the Premier League for the past two seasons.
What has been the biggest shift in your role over the past few years?
Following on from a previous question, there has been an increased focus on further expanding our distribution ecosystem, with technological advancement acting as a key driver in uncovering new opportunities.
The group has always had a third-party distribution network, with formal relationships with major publishers such as Goal.com, OneFootball, Yahoo, and DAZN.
However, over the past 24 months, we have been planning and executing longer-term collaborations at a more platform-centric level – reflecting the fragmented nature of the media landscape and the need for a multi-channel approach.
We have also spent significant time assessing opportunities within Connected TV (CTV) and the Virtual Reality space, with a view to future growth.
Web3, gaming, and youth audiences now fall within my remit. Web3 presents a range of early-stage opportunities to engage digital-native audiences, particularly through seamless loyalty and collectible offerings.
At the same time, we continue to evolve our industry-leading Roblox presence (Man City are the no 1 football brand in virtual worlds according to tech consultancy Geeik) to help drive the next generation of fandom.