Manchester City relies on fan power and AI in its jersey design

Manchester City, one of the most successful football clubs in Europe in the last decade, is breaking new ground in the design of its shirts. In a competition, the club is inviting its fans to help shape the designs for the coming seasons with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The winning design will be worn by the players in the 2026/2027 season as the club's official third jersey and will also go on sale to fans.

The idea behind this project is to involve the fans more closely in the creative process and offer them a platform where they can contribute their design ideas. For this project, Manchester City has teamed up with Puma to create a text-to-image jersey generator. This is operated by the AI company Deep Objects.

How to participate

If you want to use the generator, you need to create an account and enter a prompt that describes the look you want for your jersey. A prompt is a prompt or instruction given to an AI model, like ChatGPT, to generate a specific response or action. However, the generator did not accept each of my prompts and sent me an error message twice.

Then you need to select a style that you want the AI to use when generating your design. You can choose between eight different styles: "No Style", "Abstract", "Emotive Brushstokes", "Fractal Splendour", "Zen Gridlines", "Living Shapes", "Bold Culture" or "Dream Visions".

After that, choose up to four different colours for your jersey design, unless you have specified them more precisely in your prompt. Then you can skip this point according to the generator. Last but not least, you have a few setting options for the shape and colour of the collar of your jersey. You can also select your player and the jersey number on the back of your jersey.

You have a total of 15 free credits to create your jersey. One design costs you one credit. Of all your jersey designs, you can only submit two proposals to the competition. However, you can also earn additional credits and submissions. I was able to earn three extra credits and one submission by evaluating 20 other people's design proposals.

End date of the jersey design competition

This competition ends soon. You have until 20 December to create and submit your designs. The winner will be determined based on the judgements of the fans as well as experts from Manchester City and Puma.

Manchester City plan to showcase the best designs at a special event where the winning designs will be announced and the designers honoured. The club announced that its goalkeepers Ederson, Stefan Ortega and Rico Lewis have already used the Puma AI Creator to design a goalkeeper jersey. This was "creatively inspired by the net of a football goal".

A way forward for other clubs?

Overall, this initiative shows how clubs can use modern technology to improve interaction with their fans and find new ways to encourage creativity and, where appropriate, a sense of community. I could imagine other clubs following this path. I really like playing around with the AI jersey generator.

If you're more interested in a tried and tested jersey, you'll find it here.

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