From chasing the Ballon d’Or to courting the Palme d’Or, Real Madrid superstar Cristiano Ronaldo is trying his hand at TV production.

So this may not be the first knockings of a dramatic career change for the Portuguese attacker, but a new Facebook-commissioned drama will appear on the Watch tab in the US and will feature Ronaldo as an executive producer.

The as-yet unnamed series will centre around a girls’ football team from upstate New York as they navigate the trials and tribulations of teenage life and overcome divisions in race, religion and class.

“In my free time, one of the things I like to do is to watch good television,” said Ronaldo. “To be the executive producer of this series is going to be an amazing experience, especially given the talent of the people who are working very hard to bring it to life. The story of my life has many similarities with the highs and lows the girls varsity soccer team will face in the series. While the series is set against the background of soccer, it goes much deeper than just the beautiful game. It’s about values, challenges, friendship, difficult times, hard work, solidarity, tensions, and harmony. In a word — it’s about life.”

Whilst Ronaldo’s (perhaps scripted) statement doesn’t make it sound as though he’ll be getting too involved in TV production on a regular basis, he may well find a love for it helping out on this new show.

But if the Real Madrid star power is the dazzling headline grabber, perhaps we shouldn’t lose sight of what’s actually happening here: Facebook is committing to more and more sport-related content and even though it is investing in live sport, it is also steering its resources more and more into on-demand content relevant to sports fans. This is just another step.

Indeed, what’s also interesting is the social media platform’s desire to use its biggest draws in order to produce content. Cristiano Ronaldo has 120m followers, and his club have 108m on the platform, both of whom have been involved in creating bespoke content specifically for Facebook in the last few months, after the Hala Madrid documentary series debuted on the platform recently.

Outside of the football with a round ball, legendary quarterback Tom Brady appeared in a short video series ahead of the Super Bowl this year, too.

It shows that the platform is serious about sport content that goes beyond live, but it also seems to prove that they are intent on using those celebrities and clubs with the biggest followings to create content to keep their fans watching on Facebook.