Brentford FC — the Moneyball story of football
The English club promoted to the Premier League after a long wait of 74 years has one story resembling the path of Moneyball. From a severe cash crunch in 2012 to $300M now, this is the story of Brentford FC.
Introduction
In case you’re not aware, Moneyball is a film based on Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics (baseball club from the US), who’s disappointed over his team’s 2001 postseason defeat to the New York Yankees. In order to put together a competitive team for the next season in a time when three of his best players leave with no liberty to spend, the team uses statistics to buy underdogs and become the best team in the league.
Now let’s come back to Brentford. Although they’re far from tasting the success of the top flight, one remarkable thing about them remains how they’ve managed to stay afloat as a business and survived a very difficult financial crunch. All of this could happen because they used numbers like nobody else.
Let’s rewind to 2007
Since he attended his first match at the age of 11, Benham has been a supporter of Brentford. He gave them a $700,000 loan in 2007 while the team was having financial troubles. The supporters received this in order to purchase the team. The twist was that he could purchase the team if the supporters decided not to repay the debt.
Benham took over the team he had admired as a child after the supporters failed to repay the loan.
The number game begins now
Benham, who previously worked in investment banking, insurance and sports betting made the decision to apply his years of analytics experience to FC Midtjylland, a minor Danish football club where he invested approximately $10 million.
Benham tested his analytics theories on FC Midtjylland, implementing the successful ones in Brentford. The championship team eventually began identifying undervalued players, developing them into promising possibilities, and then selling them for a huge profit.
Let’s look at some trades :
- Bought Benrahma for $3.8 million and sold him to West Ham for $40 million.
- Bought Ollie Watkins, for $2.3 million and sold him Aston Villa for $36 million.
- Bought Neal Maupay for $2.1 million and sold him to Brighton & Hove Albion for $26 million.
The club managed to do this turnaround by changing the KPIs to measure a player’s success. For instance, they focussed more on “expected goals” based on the chances in the game rather than actual goals scored by the players.
This made it possible for them to identify discounted players that might be brought in, play at a high level, contribute to the team’s success, and then be sold for staggering profits.
How did they do this?
They have developed algorithms to analyse the power of teams from other leagues to locate such players. This enables Brentford to locate successful teams in lower-profile divisions and more readily accessible players. Both Benrahma and Maupay were acquired from Ligue 1.
With money in hand, they’ve invested and built a new stadium. They’ve earned roughly $250 to $300 million after one season at the top tier but they’ll earn more than $400 million if they can survive for a second year. The league is on now so let’s wait and watch how the club fares but for now, Matthew Benham and Brentford FC have shown how using the math right can win you promotions!
