London, 7th April 2020. Rakuten TV has announced its latest exclusive documentary, Made in Senegal, which takes an in-depth look at the rise of Liverpool FC star & African Player of the Year 2019 Sadio Mané. The documentary feature will be exclusively available across Europe on the Rakuten TV’s free ‘Rakuten Stories’ channel from April 8th.
Made in Senegal invites fans to an intimate look at the journey of one of footballs most exceptional players. Traversing the highly diverse worlds from his humble rural beginnings in a small village of south Senegal to the global spotlight of premiership football and winning the Champions League with Liverpool FC. Made in Senegal is a story about dreams, determination, faith, rebellion, courage and love.
With Mané as the main narrator, and using a mixture of documentary scenes, archive footage and animation to bring Mané’s past to life, the highly personal film reveals his thoughts, feelings and views, allowing viewers to discover an intimate side of the star player. In addition, the documentary will also enable fans to delve into Mané’s passions off the pitch, as the film looks at his social responsibly commitments to helping those around him, which has made him a role model and important pillar in his home community and beyond.
Regarding the documentary, Mané said: “I wanted to show to the people that you can achieve anything in the world, if you are ready to build on your dreams and put in hard work. I am Made in Senegal.”
Teresa López, European Content Director of Rakuten TV, stated; “Rakuten TV is delighted to present this new documentary, as we continue building our strategy to offer exclusive and original content for free. Sports are a fantastic way for people to connect together all over
the world, and ‘Made in Senegal’ has such a powerful narrative, which I think audiences will love as much as we do. The film attracted our attention from the very first moment, telling a story of self-belief and determination to achieve your dreams, of all which embodies Rakuten’s key values.”
The agreement with Rakuten TV was initiated by global sports marketing agency Lagardère Sports. Lagardère Sports holds the exclusive worldwide distribution rights for the content.
Nikolaus von Doetinchem, Executive Vice President, Global Media of Lagardère Sports, said: “We’re delighted to bring Sadio Mané’s inspirational story to fans in Europe with Rakuten TV. We believe sport has the power to inspire people and we’ll continue to work with partners to distribute premium live and on-demand sports content to as many fans as possible.”
Made in Senegal is a co-production of Vertical Social Club GmbH and arena11 sports group GmbH. The documentary will be released on Rakuten TV’s ‘FREE’ section, making it available to view without cost in the 42 countries in which the platform is operative. The new documentary will sit alongside recent exclusive releases Matchday – Inside FC Barcelona, MessiCirque and Inside Kilian Jornet. Rakuten TV also recently announced new documentary Andrés Iniesta – The Unexpected Hero, which is slated for release in Spring 2020.
In order to support the release, the entire Rakuten group collaborated to offer this Premier League documentary to all the people now staying home, making it possible to watch for free. As a further commitment from Rakuten to bring free content to people during their lockdown, this move will help viewers to stay safe at home this Easter break and enjoy a documentary that touches on what a lot of people are missing during this time, Premium football.