Inter Milan are on their way back to the top.

The club has spent the last few years rebuilding since their last Serie A title back in 2010, when a Jose Mourinho managed side won an unprecedented treble. Now, under coach Luciano Spalletti, Inter find themselves in third place in the Serie A table. They won’t win the league title this season, but with two Champions League spots still hanging in the balance, they might well be back eating from the top table of European football, where they haven’t played since 2012.

Off the pitch, there’s been something of a revival, too. The foundation of Inter Media House in 2017 attempted to bring the club’s digital content output to the forefront of world football, certainly when it comes to club-created content. And there have been some exciting projects along the way, especially in the build-up to the club’s 110th anniversary next month.

Inter Media House makes no bones about its main goal, though. “Football clubs are transforming into modern-day entertainment companies,” they say in a press release championing their newest initiative – creating “targeted and innovative content” created by the club’s “main influencers: the players”.

And on Tuesday, which happened to be midfielder Rafinha’s birthday, that strategy was made clear: the club took the chance to allow the former Barcelona player to take over Inter’s own Instagram account to celebrate by creating content for Inter’s Stories channel. No rest for the wicked, you might think.

The engagement rates were impressive, though: 300,000 people engaged with Rafinha’s takeover, and of course that’s just in one day. As Instagram’s power continues to gather at pace, you can see the effect it’s having. Inter has 1.7 million followers on Instagram and just 1.55m on Twitter as changes to the hierarchy of social media platforms are seemingly taking place. No longer is Twitter second to the behemoth Facebook, Instagram is. And now’s as good a time as any to experiment on the platform, then. Indeed many other clubs have done similar takeovers – notably the Manchester clubs, City and United, have handed over the keys to the Image and video sharing account to some of their players with engaging social media presences.

There is no doubt that Inter are right: football clubs are indeed becoming entertainment companies. This week Juventus and Netflix will release the fruits of their joint venture, taking the wider public behind the scenes at the club, training and even promising to give a snapshot of the players’ lives, too. Manchester City are also in the process of creating a similar docuseries with Amazon Prime.

There is plenty of debate about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, of course. Is independent journalism being shut out in favour of club-produced content which is wholly positive, leaving the club ultimately unaccountable? Or is it simply better to have an interview with a manager who isn’t guarded against an interviewer who asks a hard question?

Either way, clubs are producing more and they’re selling more than just football. They are a company with assets, and those assets are influencer-players who do more than just kick a ball around: they are lifestyle icons and entertainment providers.

Like the Manchester clubs, Inter also seem to understand that in order to make their players engaging, they have to make them relatable, and showing off their personalities on social media is certainly one way of doing that.

Inter have always been a club who rub shoulders with the biggest in the world. Their ultimate goal on the pitch is to be alongside those teams in the Champions League. Off it, they’re already competing hard.