Recently Manchester City have become the first club in the Premier League to reach to 1 million subcribers on YouTube.

The Citizens join FC Barcelona (3.3 million subcribers) and Real Madrid (2.6 million) in the 1 million club, being the third biggest football club channel on the platform. City reached this level with amazing growth in the last year getting nearly 250,000 new subscribers.

The club annonced the news with a video featuring Yaya Touré lifting a new trophy: the One Million plaque.

Ever seen what @youtube send you if you hit a million subscribers?

Let @yayatoure show you… pic.twitter.com/WRU3zQr4UD

— Manchester City (@ManCity) October 21, 2017

Michael Russell, Head of City TV and Social Media is proud of this performance, six years after launching the channel. “We wanted to create a channel that produced innovative content. We’re fiercely passionate about not treating YouTube as a just video hosting platform but a way we can listen to our fans on a daily basis” he told Manchester City’s official website.

Indeed over the years, adding to classic sport videos like Man of the Match or Goal of the Month, City have created a collection of original videos to entertain fans.

The club built a real editorial strategy featuring different specific topics such as pranks, skills challenges, Tunnel Cam from the Etihad, Indside City featuring all the latest news from the club, FIFA challenges, food tasting, advent calendars, Pep’s Taxi… and more. The club is a great example of how players can be integrated in “non-sport” videos being more than athletes and close to the community.

Man City fans as well as YouTube users would also remember some famous club’s videos which made the buzz like the Harlem Shake (9.2million views, club’s record) or Bubble Football featuring Manchester City Legends (5.2million views).

The Man City success on YouTube definitely comes from club’s abilty to bring the squad in new contexts keeping it in a professional and natural way: a good strategy to get engagement from the fan base accross 180 countries. To be more global, City got also the opportunity to provide videos with world famous people like Kevin Hart, Ice Cube or KSI.

With 5.1million followers on Twitter, 5.5million on Instagram, 27.5million fans on Facebook and now 1 million subcribers on YouTube, Man City are quickly increasing their digital presence via a specific strategy on each social platform and their YouTube channel is a perfect demonstration.