It has been a year of turmoil for FC Barcelona. Two managerial sackings and subsequent appointments, a humiliating Champions League exit in August, Lionel Messi’s public declaration about wanting to leave the club before staying back reluctantly and subdued transfer activity have combined to make it a year to forget for the club.
However, off the pitch, the Catalans are looking to make significant headway into a new battlefield, that of video content, with a documentary series on the inner happenings of the club being one of the first big releases. Barcelona had launched an in-house production house in early 2019, named Barca Studios, and have this year launched an OTT streaming service called Barca TV+.
Armed with these two wings, the club aims to trump fellow elite clubs across Europe in the digital space. The club earlier this month released its first big project to its Indian audience. “Matchday – Inside FC Barcelona”, an eight-part series documenting the journey of the club and its players from inside during the 2018-19 season, has now been made available in India on OTT streaming platform Discovery Plus.
“This is a format that is of interest to the public. Normally when you see a game, you see a player just in his role as a professional athlete. But with content like this, you see him bringing his kid from school, having a barbecue, meeting his friends. This kind of content is perfect for OTT platforms,” Didac Lee, a Barcelona board member who also heads the club’s digital strategy, explained during a video interaction.
Recently, Amazon had released a series documenting Tottenham’s 2019/20 season. According to Lee, more and more sports institutions across the world are acknowledging the need to engage with fans through projects like this. “We feel it’s the best way to connect and engage with our global fanbase. In the digital world, the best currency is content. Especially content that is authentic,” he said.
“So if we record a documentary that is scripted, the audience would see through it. Our idea is to keep generating more content like this; it is one of the pillars of the club’s strategy. And it is not just for FC Barcelona, but for all sports clubs in the world, this is a strategic area.”
The Catalan giants are now lining up a few more releases and have also signed up famous Spanish screenwriter Albert Espinosa to work on a fictional drama set around the club’s academy La Masia. “We just announced a cartoon TV show that is Barca themed and is very interesting for younger fans. Then we have Albert Espinosa, with whom we are working on a TV show on La Masia. It is a fictional show that explains the story of a young player who comes to La Masia and how he evolves over the course of the next few seasons. This is content that is not exclusively designed for football fans; it’s a personal story and even if you don’t like football, this is content that you would find interesting,” Lee elaborated.
“We are also recording some movies, all Barca themed, about the values of the club, our legends, about social topics. And we believe that Barca Studios is our biggest bet in the digital world. Because with the global fanbase that we have, it is important to deliver content, and not just sports content but entertainment content as well. Some of the content that we will be producing will be on major digital platforms and some will be on our own OTT platform Barca TV+,” he added.