KOCHI: English Premiership top guns Manchester United has unveiled a new series of India-oriented videos targeted at the club’s 35 million fans in the Indian subcontinent. Starting this week, ManU will unveil one video every week until January featuring documentary-style stories from its fan community in the country.
The club, which has 659 million fans worldwide, already stages the hugely popular interactive #ILOVEUNITED event in India each year, which gives the fans an opportunity to engage with Club legends. Now the first video in the series - Standing United – tells the story of members of the Manchester United Supporters Club (MUSC) Kerala, who joined supporters of other clubs to engage in relief and rescue operations in the wake of the century’s worst floods which ravaged Kerala in mid-August.
The film features MUSC Kerala members narrating their experiences and camaraderie as they became a central part of the rescue camps in Kochi. MUSC Kerala members reached out to people via social media and WhatsApp messages, urging them to donate and volunteer. True to the spirit of the club they support, they recruited around 150 volunteers initially to supply food to those marooned in various parts. These groups were able to help more than 30,000 families during the rescue and recovery efforts.
According to Phil Lynch, Manchester United, Media CEO, “Our fans in India are extremely important to us and the sheer passion millions of them have for the club is incredible. We want to celebrate the devotion through engaging content, created specifically for our Indian supporters, which tells some remarkable stories of dedication and shows the extraordinary lengths people go to support the club they love”.
“The growth of football in the country has been well documented and it’s reflected in what we see on our own platforms.” Video link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7oPu2D9jts&feature=youtu.be