Collingwood wants its own 24-hour TV channel

COLLINGWOOD wants its own 24-hour television channel within two years.

Collingwood Premiership 2010

COLLINGWOOD wants its own 24-hour television channel within two years.

Magpies chief executive Gary Pert said the club would spend up to $1 million to follow in the footsteps of global sports giants Manchester United and Barcelona.

The investment could include construction of a dedicated production studio.

The club is exploring broadcast platforms, but it is understood Fox Sports would be involved in some capacity.

"This is in line with the way the big European soccer clubs keep their supporters engaged with the club," Pert told the Herald Sun.

"I would suggest that in the next couple of years we would like to get to a point that we've created a platform that is available 24/7 for Collingwood supporters to see what is happening in the club today, what the plans are for the future, enjoy going back and looking at the historical elements of our champion players and our games and our premierships.

"We want to give the behind-the-scenes stuff and the access to an insight that we don't want to put out to the broader football population because we want to say, 'This is your club so we'll give you intimate access'.

"There's a few different ways that that could commercially be done, but that's clearly our objective, to create something like that.

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"This won't be like a 24-hour footy show, this will have shows for kids, shows where the players can do their own segments.

"Our supporters might have their own shows, there's a whole lot of different creative angles once we build the platform."

Collingwood has begun testing the waters with unique content it could use on its channel.

Partisan commentary of matches -- akin to president Eddie McGuire's call against Richmond in Round 4 -- could feature, at least in a replay capacity, as could focused vision of one player, as Fox Footy did with Gold Coast's Gary Ablett on the weekend.

Manchester United launched its own TV channel in 1998. It is available on subscription in seven countries.

Spanish giant Barcelona launched its network in 1999. It is broadcast on the club's website and is available for three euros ($3.90) a month.

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Collingwood has the most members of any Australian football club and Pert revealed reserved seat memberships may soon have to be capped as the club struggles to accommodate new members at the MCG.

Collingwood has 76,000 members.

The Pies capped their Legends membership at 9000 in 2011 due to limited access to guaranteed Grand Final tickets.

But they may restrict other categories to preserve walk-up seats for fans.

"As we've grown membership and our reserve seat membership we've needed more and more tickets from Etihad and the MCC," Pert said.

"And while that wasn't a problem four or five years ago, now it's becoming much, much harder."