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Manchester United Is About To Become A Drama Series And It Could Be Worth Millions
Manchester United just agreed to turn its 146-year history into a Crown-style prestige drama with Lionsgate. Before you write this off as vanity, here’s why it’s actually the smartest monetisation move the club has made since buying Cristiano Ronaldo.
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When Life Gives You Drama, Make a Drama Series
Let’s be honest, if any football club’s history deserves the Netflix treatment, it’s Manchester United. The Busby Babes tragedy? Shakespeare couldn’t write it. The 1999 Champions League final comeback? Pure Hollywood. The Glazer family’s leveraged buyout that loaded £600 million of debt onto the club? That’s Succession meets The Big Short.
The project, currently in development with Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio reportedly in talks to helm it, would follow a format similar to The Crown - multiple seasons dramatising different eras of the club’s history. United stands to receive a “guaranteed sum in the low multi-million pounds” upfront, plus ongoing royalties if the show gets made and sold to a streaming platform.
But here’s where it gets interesting from an investor perspective……unlike a documentary, which requires living stakeholders like Sir Alex Ferguson and former players to sign off on every frame (remember those Disney talks that went nowhere?), a drama just needs rights clearance. It’s a brilliant end-run around the ego management that has torpedoed previous attempts to monetise United’s archive.
The Comparison: Drive to Survive
Drive to Survive turned Formula 1 into America’s fastest-growing sport. The numbers are absurd:
U.S. viewership up 53% in a single year
Female viewers: 8% → 18%
18-34 demographic: up 185%
Generated $260 million in Netflix subscriber revenue in three quarters of 2024
But here’s the mind-bending part: ESPN pays $90 million annually for live F1 broadcast rights. A Netflix documentary generated nearly that much value in 25% of the time. The criticism? Drive to Survive created fans of the show who don’t watch actual races. For United, that’s less of a problem, a prestige drama about the club drives merchandise, tourism, and global brand value regardless of whether viewers attend Old Trafford.
The Case Study: Wrexham
Ryan Reynolds bought a fifth-tier Welsh club for £2 million in 2020. By 2024, Welcome to Wrexham had:
Generated 595% growth in commercial income (£1.9M → £13.2M)
Attracted 16 million viewers
Increased Google searches by 1,000%
Brought £3.2 million directly from the FX/Disney+ deal
Turned Wrexham into a League 2 club generating Championship-level revenue
The kicker? Wrexham were a fifth-tier Welsh club. Manchester United is arguably the most famous club on the planet. The monetisation potential is exponentially higher.
Who Should Play Whom (The Fun Part)
British bookmakers are already taking odds.
Sir Alex Ferguson: Brian Cox
After Succession, he’s basically typecast as “terrifyingly Scottish authority figure.” Gary Oldman would be brilliant but overkill (though that’s never stopped Gary).
George Best: Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Has the dangerous charisma. Cillian Murphy brings intensity, but can he capture the “genius destroyed by celebrity” arc without making it depressing?
Roy Keane: Jonathan Rhys Meyers
You need someone who looks permanently correct about everything while simultaneously looking like he’s about to explain why you’re wrong using only tactical analysis. Jonathan Rhys Meyers has the intensity.
Eric Cantona: Just cast him
He’s already mysterious, semi-retired from acting, and nobody does philosophical footballer better than the actual philosophical footballer.
The Business Reality: Why This Works Financially
No operational disruption: Unlike All or Nothing, which required camera crews at training, this is pure archive monetization
Multiple revenue streams: Guaranteed payment + royalties + merchandising tie-ins
Subscriber retention: Sports content (especially narrative-driven sports content) has the lowest churn rates on streaming platforms
Global distribution: Every episode is a brand advertisement
Independent of performance: You can’t get relegated from Netflix’s Top 10, which matters for a club that’s struggled post-Ferguson
The Risks
Will the Glazers demand everything be sanitised? The Crown made the Royal Family furious
Is the sports documentary market oversaturated? Full Swing, Break Point, endless All or Nothing seasons
Casting a legend wrong is an instant PR disaster
Will it create casual “fans of the show” rather than engaged club supporters?
The Bottom Line In 2026
You’re not a football club. You’re a content studio that happens to employ 25 athletes. The Crown proved royal drama is worth $504 million. Drive to Survive proved niche motorsport is worth $260 million. Welcome to Wrexham proved a Welsh fifth-tier club is worth $100 million.
Manchester United has better source material than all of them combined. Will the execution match the potential? That depends on whether Lionsgate finds a broadcaster willing to write a big check and whether the stakeholders can resist sanitising the real drama.
But as a business model? This is why every major sports franchise will be developing prestige dramas by 2030.
The Investor Takeaway: Sports franchises are increasingly media companies with teams attached. The strategic shift from one-off documentary deals to multi-season prestige dramas represents a new revenue paradigm. When Drive to Survive generates nearly as much value as ESPN’s entire F1 broadcast deal, the content value of sports IP independent of on-field performance becomes the real asset.
Which football club should go next? And who would you actually cast as Sir Alex Ferguson?
