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The first Premier League Club to hit 1 million YouTube subscribers

How did Manchester City become the first premier league club to touch one million YouTube subscribers.

In October this year, Manchester City celebrated a unique milestone – for a football club. It clocked up its millionth subscriber on its YouTube channel. Since the channel’s launch six years ago, Manchester City has been viewed 350 million times and 51 of its videos went past the 1-million mark.

The club sees the Manchester City YouTube channel as a way of extending its relationship with its fans beyond Match Day. Rather than glossy match day highlights, the club’s most successful videos have gone viral by capitalising on a hot topic. In 2013, Manchester City was the first Premier League club to challenge its players to do the Harlem Shake on camera, with the resulting video becoming the club’s most watched at more than 9.3 million views.

Widen the scope to include the larger social media landscape, and Manchester City, over the past year, has grown its following across all platforms - up 60 per cent on Instagram (5 million followers), 33 per cent on Twitter (8.1 million) and 18 per cent on Facebook (25 million).

Numbers are not everything if the City did not engage with its fans. Therefore, the team focused on using “smart data” to recognise fan behaviour and move towards a personalised experience that is relevant to their interests, rather than pushing out promotions or discounts.

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