'Next few years' - Ferran Soriano gives update on bold Man City move

Ferran Soriano is hopeful that the first fictional shows produced by Manchester City will be hitting TV screen in the 'next few years' as part of a recent partnership.

City Studios is the club's in-house production company that serves up everything from live programmes on a matchday to the season-long documentaries charting how the campaign has gone. Their latest effort, Together: 4 in a Row, that came out this week, was intended to be more of a story about leadership and resilience rather than simply a chronological rundown of the season.

It is with Sony Pictures Television where City are jumping headfirst into fiction though. A deal was agreed in July for the two companies to work together that included 'football-themed productions' and scripted shows, as well as kids' TV for a worldwide audience.

READ MORE: Pep Guardiola has helped next Man City manager after Premier League snub

READ MORE: New team, job offers, legacy - why Pep Guardiola is staying at Man City

Speaking at the launch of the latest documentary, Soriano explained what a busy six months it had been with ideas already being worked on that can be pitched to the major streaming giants in the same way that their Treble documentary was. As the City CEO plots more ways to create revenue for the football club, he believes the first fruits of the latest labour could be seen in a few years.

“We are so ambitious. Gavin [Johnson, head of City Studios] is ambitious, Ged Doherty (Executive Producer at Sony Pictures Entertainment and City Football Group) is the one that really knows about movies and is working with us," he said..

"We have a lot of ideas that we are developing. They are not in the air, we are working on several fictional TV shows. We are working on shows for kids and we have a list of projects that we are excited about.

“When we do these documentaries we don’t compete with anyone, we are the only one who have this incredible footage that the team captures. If we do fictional TV or shows, we are competing with everybody with Netflix, Amazon or whoever.

“We are confident we have the creativity, we have the insights in football to create some fictional stories. My hope is you see some of these on your screens in the next few years. I can say that the pipeline of projects is large and the ideas are very exciting."