Manchester United are letting Amazon cameras into the club for an All Or Nothing documentary, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
It’s one of those ‘follow the season from behind the scenes’ type shows – they made one with Spurs, Arsenal, and Manchester City too.
None of those clubs came off brilliantly.
It’s one of those things I wish the club hadn’t agreed to, but I also know that I will 100% be watching it when it comes out. It’s awkward but it’s true. What fan is going to turn down the opportunity to see snippets of what really goes on at the club they love?
The show is going to launch on Prime Video in summer 2027, so this time next year basically, after the 2026/27 season is complete. Filming will begin imminently.
Apparently, the club are getting more than £10 million in exchange for access, and for me, the risk reward ratio feels well off.
Even though I know I will binge watch it in a weekend.
Bad Timing
I’m not against the idea of a documentary series full stop, but I do think this is pretty bad timing.
The club currently feels more settled than it has in a long time, but let’s not kid ourselves, we are still in a period of transition. We are still trying to rebuild. We are still not out of the woods. Next season could go either way.
We have a new manager who is not the most experienced, and is about to feel the added pressure of the Champions League on top of the Premier League, the FA Cup, and the League Cup. We have a group of players who finally feel cohesive and happy, plus a number of new lads coming in who will need to find their feet. But it doesn’t feel like we are quite there yet on the pitch.
The spotlight on United players and managers is ridiculous. It always will be. Mistakes are amplified, soundbites never go away, and having it all recorded for posterity in a documentary is not going to help players move on if they have howlers, or help our manager keep his cool after a string of bad results.
If this was an established squad with a manager who had a few seasons under his belt going for the league, fine. But it’s not. It’s happening at a critical point in our rebuild. So why risk it?
These Documentaries NEED Tension
These documentaries always make out like they are a fly on the wall, but they’re not. For the show to work, it needs tension, drama, jeopardy. It needs a story. And if it can’t find that, it will try to create it. Either in the edit, or, in a worst case scenario, by producers getting in people’s ears and encouraging it.
Emotional team talks, dressing room bust ups, players on a bad run, stress in the board room – the specifics don’t matter, the point is, the director and producers will be hunting for clippable moments that can only hurt us.
We do not need those distractions.
It’s hard to control too. Because if you give too much access you end up revealing things that probably should have stayed private, and if you don’t, the whole thing looks sanitised or staged and you get mocked.
United are the easiest club in the world to mock, because we are the biggest. People love to hate on us. All it will take is an uninspiring team talk, or a player looking bored, or a moment in training that can be taken two ways, and a thousand memes will be born.
Look what happened with the Spurs All Or Nothing documentary – people still post those clips of Eric Dier and Dele Alli, and the memes of Jose Mourinho. Is that what we want for Manchester United? Because odds on it’s going to happen. That’s how sports media works. They look for anything they can laugh at, or be outraged by, and they push it hard.
The Money Isn’t Worth It
There is not yet an official figure, but reports say the deal “eclipses” the £10 million paid to other clubs who made similar documentaries. It’s a record fee, whatever it is.
That could be anything, but it’s unlikely to be more than double. So let’s say Man United make £20 million out of this. That’s not a lot in football terms. For context, it would cover Bruno’s wages for the year.
I get that the club need to constantly find new ways to make revenue, and since they have been cutting costs elsewhere that seem like penny pinching in comparison, turning down a major media deal might have been hard to justify.
But the money still needs to be weighed up against the risk.
For a club the size of United, the fee is not going to be transformative – we aren’t Wrexham. It won’t pay for a squad rebuild, it won’t clear our debt, and you can’t buy back the privacy we will be giving away. Not to mention the potential for reputational damage that we can’t put a price on.
I’m not saying I don’t want the money, but the upside feels pretty limited unless we absolutely smash the season and win trophies. Even then, Man City won the treble during their All Or Nothing documentary, and they still came away getting flack for it feeling too scripted and not real.
Whatever the season’s outcome, the potential downsides are many.
United Haven’t Gone In Blind
Despite my reservations, I am also aware that United will not have gone into this blind.
No one knows the details of the deal except the club and the production company, and the decision makers at the club are not stupid. Who knows how much editorial control they have, or what contractual protections have been negotiated. Maybe some areas are off limits. Maybe access to training and team talks is limited. Maybe certain things can be vetoed.
We don’t know, and I think that’s why a lot of people are nervous about it. The not knowing.
It’s easy to assume the worst in these situations, but I have faith that the people who ultimately signed off on this gave it plenty of thought. They will understand that the club’s reputation is commercially valuable but also emotionally important for fans.
And who knows? If we go through 2026/27 winning trophies and thrashing rivals, it might even end up being a fantastic record of a successful point in United’s history.
I’m not getting overly giddy here, I’m just saying, maybe this decision will look different in a year’s time? It’s not impossible.
I’ll be watching either way.