WWE, Fortnite and Rihanna aid Manchester City’s push to be America’s Premier League team

“We are glad to see a lot of blue shirts,” Pep Guardiola said as he sat in the iconic Yankee Stadium in New York. “When we started seven or eight years ago, there was not much, and now because of how these players have behaved in the past, it’s really nice to come to the stadiums and see a lot of blue shirts, it’s a lot of pride.”

It is hard to stand out in New York City, but in the hours leading up to Manchester City’s game with AC Milan last weekend, you could not go far without seeing somebody wearing one of those blue shirts. Whether groups of friends or whole families, City jerseys, often with ‘Haaland 9’ on the back, were probably even more common than the classic yellow taxi — traditionalists may be disappointed to learn that many of those have been phased out in recent years.

City’s presence in America is growing. According to statistics provided by Nielsen, the sports analytics company, City have 32million followers in the States. Across last season, their live match audience in the country grew 10 per cent. Official supporters club membership grew by 27 per cent. Official club memberships have increased 303 per cent since the 2021-22 season.

The data suggests that one in three U.S. fans are yet to pick a team. City want it to be them and between the on-pitch success and off-field access to players, trophies and legends, they are giving it a good go.

“There were so many blue shirts in the stands,” says Jimmy, a New York-based City fan who was at last weekend’s game against AC Milan. “Far more here than when I saw City against Liverpool in New Jersey in 2018 — it was a sea of red.

“Winning six titles, four in a row, along with a treble and signing Erling Haaland will do that.”

As Guardiola put it after City’s friendly with Barcelona in Orlando last Tuesday: “Our CEO and bosses are happy.”

The funny thing about Guardiola is that he gives the impression that he would rather be somewhere else on these trips. Not ‘anywhere’ else, just somewhere closer to home, where football is the focus.

“(We are here) because the club needs to do it for commercial issues,” he said. “If people say go there, we go with a big smile, try to do good training sessions and not to get injuries and come back.”

That was actually last year during a spectacularly successful tour of Japan and South Korea. Successful in the sense that it earned the club $20million and that 23,000 people turned up just to see them train in Seoul, but several other sessions had to be cancelled due to the heat and players struggled to sleep.

Guardiola has long since come to accept that there are two sides to these tours — brand-building at the cost of ideal preparation — but it is something he likes to mention anyway. This summer, it was when he was asked about the non-stop schedule that has added extra Champions League games and a 32-team Club World Cup — hosted in the U.S. — bolted on to next season.

“There will not be a solution because there is no intention to find a solution,” he said, sitting in that same seat at the home of the Yankees. “The clubs have to travel to make our brand known around the world, to let other continents and places see our players, and we have to adapt.”

And yet, if he had to be dragged to the other side of the world for commercial reasons, there is nowhere Guardiola would rather be than the United States, particularly New York, the city where he had his sabbatical after leaving Barcelona in 2012. Despite his playful, sarcastic press conference comment that “the city is so cheap, oh my god!”, those close to him say he lights up when in NYC and City even managed to pull off a photoshoot with him in Times Square.

Pre-season is not just about coaching for Guardiola: he was put to work in Chapel Hill during the first few days of the tour, being shown the latest version of City’s Together documentary, recording his interview that will be featured in the final cut.

In Orlando, there was at least time for him to enjoy a round of golf and a one-hour lesson with the PGA’s Danny Willett at City’s base, the luxurious Four Seasons complex. Just over the way from Disney World, the players could see nightly firework displays from their rooms.

City got their money’s worth out of him and his players, especially the few star names available following summer internationals, with a series of ‘activations’ throughout the tour that are designed to bring the team closer to overseas fans old and new.

The 17 trophies they have won in eight years under Guardiola have attracted millions of fans across the world and with the U.S. being a big part of that, the club wanted to capitalise in a summer when half the Premier League travelled across the Atlantic.

According to Nielsen, City have more active users — those who have interacted with a club’s content (liked, shared, commented etc) in a given period — than any Premier League club in the States. Using the slightly less current ‘followers’ metric, which counts those to have liked a Facebook page or followed an Instagram account, for example, City are among the top three in the world.

Many clubs launched WhatsApp channels last September and in that time, City have raced to the top of the charts with 29million followers — only Liverpool and Manchester United come anywhere near close with 20million and 18.3million respectively , while no others have more than seven million.

Some things they do are common among Premier League clubs but by no means a given. Just take, for example, the fact that Barcelona, who understandably have a huge following in the U.S., do not sell tickets for their training sessions. That would seem alien to City given the success they have had in that regard; this summer they sold around 15,000 tickets for sessions in Chapel Hill, Orlando and Columbus, with training in New York by invitation only.

Their efforts to get star players closer to fans on tour have actually rubbed some local supporters up the wrong way, with complaints online that overseas fans have better access than those who go to the Etihad Stadium every week.

In New York, fans started queueing the night before to meet Ederson and Josko Gvardiol at — wait for it — the City pop-up store next to the Rockefeller Centre, which opened at the start of June and will close at the end of September. The Premier League trophy was there for the unveiling, which served to kick off this year’s global trophy tour — as long as there are new trophies in the cabinet, City will take them around the world, putting them on display for their overseas fans.

City’s marketing department gets to work engaging with overseas supporters not just during pre-season tours but throughout the year. Last season, they took their Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League trophies on a global trophy tour, starting in Japan and South Korea before heading around the world, accompanied by former players. Before 2024 is out, they will visit China, the UK, Japan, India, the UAE, Brazil and Canada, before finishing up in Chicago in December.

At the same time as the Gvardiol/Ederson meet, Guardiola, Haaland and Jack Grealish featured at a block party at the nearby Puma store, where fans cried when meeting Grealish and Guardiola sunk a few baskets after dropping a hint that he might even sign a new contract during a Q&A. Later that afternoon, the entire team trained in Central Park, on grass not exactly up to City Football Group (CFG) standards.

 

JOSKO 💬 It’s nice to be in the US, it’s my first time here with Manchester City. It’s different to being in Europe – especially in New York when we have the opportunity to play in Central Park!

We are looking forward to playing against Chelsea tomorrow here in Columbus. pic.twitter.com/yHv4PofVof

— Manchester City (@ManCity) August 2, 2024

After the AC Milan match at Yankee Stadium, Haaland, Ederson, Bobb, Gvardiol, Rico Lewis and Stefan Ortega met winners of a meet and greet raffle — Grealish was not there as he was meeting Rihanna, who had arrived at the stadium with five minutes to go.

Before the tour, City announced a partnership with World Wrestling Entertainment and because it turns out that John Cena is a Haaland fan, he was happy to put a blonde wig on and call the striker so they could announce the four host cities — CEO Ferran Soriano had requested four different locations as part of City’s push. Players including Kalvin Phillips and Lewis even visited a WWE performance centre in Orlando to try out their moves (insurance permitting).

For City’s four matches, against Celtic, AC Milan, Barcelona and Chelsea, they wore shirts featuring a “jointly designed new name and number style”, which includes the WWE logo. Funnily enough, back home, Noel Gallagher has designed a font that will be printed on Champions League shirts.

City like to make inroads into the local culture wherever they are, with the idea of “being a local, not a tourist”. Other examples include Bernardo Silva doing karaoke in Tokyo last summer to Haaland and Grealish getting soaked on Popeye and Bluto’s bilge-rat barges at Universal Studios, Florida (The Athletic can confirm, first hand, that you do get soaked).

In Chapel Hill, Grealish helped launch the new City-themed Fortnite map by playing it with local gamers.

You get the idea.

City had different criteria in mind when choosing their four host cities: the pull of New York is obvious and CFG have New York City FC stationed in Jersey, but they also visited college towns in Chapel Hill and Columbus with young markets to tap into (the fact universities were closed for the summer was taken into account). City want to explore different places and try to embed themselves in specific local events, such as visiting the Ohio State Fair and the Chapel Hill supporters’ club. City also took their star names to hospitals in different cities.

The first match, against Celtic at the 50,000-seater Kenan Stadium, was nowhere near full, perhaps the flip side of it being a small town of 60,000 people, while ticket prices ranged from $100-$200. There were sell-outs in New York (46,122), despite complaints about prices (cheapest $145, most expensive $700 for VIP bonuses) and also Orlando (63,237), where City versus Barca became the highest-grossing football match in the stadium’s history.

While City and Chelsea were well represented in Columbus, they could not fill the Ohio Stadium on Saturday night, but it is impossible not to imagine the draw, and indeed the cost, if one day Premier League matches were to come to America.

With Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United also breaking various stadium records this summer, the attraction of the Premier League in the States is obvious. City have been making huge inroads on that front and they will be back next summer, too, in the new and expanded Club World Cup.

The prospect of three or four weeks in various U.S. cities, playing competitive matches against some of Europe’s biggest sides, must be regarded as a dream come true for stakeholders and fans, even if the players’ holidays get pushed back that little bit further.

(Top photo: Jeff Dean/Getty Images)