Citizens and football fans will be pleased to know that Netflix has the streaming rights to the long-awaited documentary footage of Manchester City’s historic Treble-winning season. The Premier League club completed the continental treble and lifted the Premier League, FA Cup, and Champions League trophies in the 2022/2023 season. This documentary, filmed by an embedded crew and produced by City Studios, was teased by the club in August 2023 with the caption “Coming soon…” Less than a year later, the streamer would announce that Together: Treble Winners, a six-part docuseries, would stream on Netflix on Tuesday, April 2, joining an impressive line-up of sports content.
“To win the Treble was a truly special moment for this Club and every single person involved from our players, our coaches, our backroom staff all worked so hard every single day to achieve what we did. I am so proud that we continue to fight for our success, for the next trophy, for the next game. We will always remember this incredible time and I hope our fans do when watching this new series,” Manchester City Manager Pep Guardiola said.
The addition of this docuseries reinforces Netflix as a streaming home for sports entertainment. The streaming service has steadily presented itself as a go-to spot for sports content. With the success of Formula 1: Drive to Survive, the anthology approach to American football’s quarterbacks on Quarterback, and the innovative The Netflix Slam, Netflix keeps finding new avenues to appeal to seasoned and new sports fans.
It’s building a well-rounded football line-up, with Together: Treble Winners joining the ranks of Beckham, Captains of the World, and Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team – to name a few. Notably, Together: Treble Winners isn’t the first of its kind, with the feature-length film Together debuting in August 2021 and the seven-episode docuseries Together: Champions Again! dropping in 2022. It feels especially relevant, considering the All or Nothing sports documentary series on Prime Video, in which Manchester City were the first Premier League club to participate in 2018.
“Manchester City has an innovative and industry leading approach centred around our in- house creative and production hub, City Studios, and it is testament to the talent and hard work of the team that the latest documentary series will be released on Netflix,” Nuria Tarre, Chief Marketing and Fan Experience Officer at City Football Group, said in a statement.
“The club was the first to allow cameras behind the scenes back in 2018 with All or Nothing and over the last four years we’ve had an embedded crew following our team every season to create the best, exclusive content that isn’t usually shown in football. Today’s announcement is the next step in our journey as one of the leading global sports entertainment organisations and we hope our fans and everyone around the world enjoys,” Tarre added.
All or Nothing began on Prime Video in 2016 with a closer look at the National Football League’s 2015 season for the Arizona Cardinals. That streamer has fostered a relationship with the NFL. Prime Video became the exclusive home for Thursday Night Football in September 2022. The 11-year agreement “marked Prime Video as the first streaming service to air a season-long exclusive national broadcast package from the NFL, and includes 16 regular-season games and one preseason game per year.” In 2023, it released the sports documentary Kelce, following NFL All-Pro center Jason Kelce during the 2022 season – what he thought would be his final year in the NFL. Nevertheless, Prime Video has yet to release sports entertainment at the same rate as Netflix.
Apple TV+’s catalog is growing more consistently. The newer streaming service is particularly fond of Lionel Messi—and understandably so. Apple TV+ has released Messi Meets America about the athlete’s move to Inter Miami F.C. and Messi’s World Cup: The Rise of a Legend about his journey in the 2022 World Cup in less than a year of each other. It’s also home to the Apple TV+ originals, like The Dynasty: New England Patriots, Steph Curry: Underrated, Super League: The War for Football, and more. In perhaps its biggest pull, Apple TV+ has a 10-year deal to be Major League Soccer’s primary broadcast partner.
Still, as The Hollywood Reporter notes, “Netflix has become arguably the biggest buyer of sports docs, with series following leagues, teams and players in the NFL, MLB, NBA, NASCAR, Formula 1, pro tennis and other sports.” Adding the Premier League to its documentary portfolio will surely contribute to its appeal as the best (for now) home for sports entertainment. The streaming service really redefined the mold with The Netflix Slam that saw Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal and two-time Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz face off (Alcaraz won!) at an arena inside Las Vegas’s Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Sunday, March 3, 2024.
Unlike Apple TV+ that only broadcasts the MLS games and more like Prime Video’s deal with the NFL, The Netflix Slam featured on and off-court commentary, as well as celebrtiy guests in the stands.
The success of the live tennis event (Variety reports that all 10,000 seats sold out.) comes after Netflix’s first venture into live sports last year, The Netflix Cup. That one-of-its-kind event paired Forumla 1: Drive to Survive athletes with those from the Netflix’s golf docuseries Full Swing to compete in a match-play tournament at the 18-hold Wynn Golf Club at Wynn Las Vegas. Formula 1: Drive to Survive has been a success for Netflix, and motorsport’s popularity in the United States. “In 2018, only about 263,000 people attended the US Grand Prix, held every year in Austin, Texas. In 2022, that number jumped to an unprecedented 440,000. The reason? Drive to Survive, many have said,” CNN reported in October 2023.
While it has stopped production on its tennis reality series Break Point after two seasons, Netflix still has a strong handle on sports programming – acquired, original, and live. “Look at a traditional sports network that has a ton of live games, and maybe they’ll put on a documentary after and hope people watch it. This is almost the inverse. We’ve built some great momentum and great viewership for our sports documentaries and [live] is an extension of that,” Gabe Spitzer, vice president of non-fiction sports, told Variety.
Netflix is releaseing sports entertainment that – more often than not – leads into creative live events. By including Together: Treble Winners in its line-up, it’s exciting to wonder what a potential future could be between Netflix and the Premier League. There isn’t a go-to streaming home for Premier League docs and docuseries. For instance, Burnley F.C. has a docuseries, Mission to Burnley, streaming on Peacock. Perhaps, Together: Treble Winners is a step toward more Premier League football content on Netflix. Only time will tell. Until then, Manchester City fans can enjoy this long-awaited docuseries this April. Either way, every streaming service trying its hand at sports entertainment is a win for sports fans.
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Are you excited for Together: Treble Winners? Let us know in the comments below!
Together: Treble Winners streams on Netflix on Tuesday, April 2.
