Sky voice their unease with Amazon set to finalise £10m deal with Manchester City for Etihad documentary series

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Manchester City are finalising the details of a highly lucrative fly-on-the-wall documentary series with Amazon Prime despite opposition from Premier League rights holders.

It is understood City are being paid more than £10million for allowing Amazon access to all areas around the club for a season to film behind the scenes content for a number of programmes featuring Pep Guardiola’s side.

But Sky are known to have voiced their understandable unease at Amazon being able to buy their way into the Etihad Stadium when the sports subscription service have paid more than £4billion for their current Premier League rights, which works out at £11m a match. 

Man City are finalising the details of a fly-on-the-wall documentary series with Amazon Prime

The Premier League have also made it clear they have strict regulations around match-day coverage to protect the rights of Sky and BT Sports, as well as their numerous overseas partners.

The Premier League restrictions have led to Netflix — Amazon’s great rivals in the sports documentary sphere — this week signing up Juventus instead for a similar project.

An email sent from Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles to UK contacts stated the big issue, which they did not know how to solve, was the Premier League controlling game-day access, so that getting match footage as well as material from the dug-out and dressing room would be ‘very tricky’. 

There has been opposition from Premier League rights holders such as Sky

In contrast, the Juventus deal will let Netflix produce four hour-long documentaries next year following the main characters on and off the field. It includes access to Serie A footage and inside the dressing room.

A Juventus spokesman said: ‘It’s a source of pride that Juventus is the first football club to be the subject of a Netflix original docu-series.’

Amazon declined to comment about the City partnership or its believed cost.

The Juventus deal will let Netflix produce four hour-long documentaries next year