From Extinction to Excellence: Brighton’s Data-Driven Triumph
Sporting history was made last week, on 30 Nov 2023, in Greece, as Brighton & Hove Albion FC, a relatively small British club based out of East Sussex in Southeastern, beat AEK Athens and guaranteed themselves a knockout spot in the UEFA Europa League.
This may not seem historic but it is, considering that 26 years ago, Brighton & Hove Albion FC were on the brink of extinction.
In 1997, they were one game away from being relegated to the 4th division of football. Relegation from the 3rd division of English football at the time, the Football League, would have been the final nail in the coffin of a struggling club, both on and off the field.
Fast forward to a couple of decades later, Brighton finished 9th in the Premier League (the 1st division of English football) in the 2021/22 season and 6th in in the 2022/23 season.
The astounding this is that they finished above teams like Chelsea FC and Tottenham Hotspurs, who had significantly higher budgets.
In fact, in that year, Brighton ranked 16th in the Premier League in terms of total salary paid. Finishing 6th with a low-cost team is an almost impossible task, especially when generational talents and overseas superstars are brought in at hefty prices to the bigger budget teams regularly.
Out of all the players who participated in the 2022/23 season, Brighton’s most expensive transfer was Pervis Estupinian. But that season, league-wide, his transfer fee was ranked only the 116th most expensive transfer fee out at around £20 million. Estupinian had 41 appearances in total and played a pivotal part in the team’s success that year.
As a comparison, Chelsea had paid £26.4 million to acquire their backup goal keeper, Edouard Mendy, who had a total of 12 appearances that season, which was the 83rd highest out of all league players that season.
To see the magnitude of how much of a profit Brighton earned that season, Brighton earned £150.2 million for finishing 6th, while having paid 18th in wages in the league (a meagre £28.3 million).
The only teams that had lower wages were Leeds United, who finished 19th and were relegated, and Brentford FC, who actually ended up finishing 9th.
How?
How did Brighton (and Brentford) get such amazing results while being on such a tight budget?
The answer: data.
Bloom’s revolution:
One of the major reasons for the data revolution at Brighton is Tony Bloom.
A majority owner of Brighton & Hove Albion FC, Bloom strongly believes in the power of data.
Bloom owns Starlizard, a company he started in 2006 to beat the bookies by using the latest data and analytics tools to understand the sport. Starlizard has grown in the subsequent years and currently has around 200 employees.
According to a betting industry insider, Bloom was using the expected goal modeling system well before anyone knew what it was, and is probably a decade ahead in terms of technology used to understand and break down the sport.
Tony Bloom brought his exceptional modeling skills and acumen to Brighton to unearth and identify undervalued players all around the world, and grow them at the club into superstars.
But is that sufficient? Brighton’s success comes not only from obtaining undervalued players, but also from knowing when to sell their own players.
Plan B for Brighton:
“The loss of valuable players”, says Paul Barber, the CEO of Brighton & Hove Albion FC, “is actually an inevitable consequence of progress”.
One of the main tenets at Brighton is knowing that selling players is a necessity, but selling them only with a solid backup plan in mind, and also knowing that they’re being sold for what they’re worth (or even more).
This doesn’t necessarily apply to just their players. In 2022, Brighton’s manager at the time, Graham Potter was recruited (and later fired) by Chelsea. Brighton were paid £21 million for Potter’s departure, and hired Roberto de Zerbi in Potter’s place, who has fit in perfectly with the system built at Brighton. The best part of the deal for Brighton is that De Zerbi was obtained at a much lower price.
The biggest thing to note is that De Zerbi was hired just 11 days after the departure of Potter. According to Paul Barber, Brighton are ready for the departure of any player, executive, coach or staff member, with backups already planned.
To facilitate this, Brighton’s substitute players typically get good playing time to get them acclimated to conditions and keep them ready to step in place of first team players, in case of any sudden injuries or last second transfers.
Young and Old:
Young players can be brought up through academies, but they’re pretty rare in English football. Players like Grealish, Rice and Mount are rare and expensive prospects, while players like Jude Bellingham have taken their efforts to non-Premier League teams and would require a hefty transfer fee to be brought into the Premier League.
Instead, young players like Enciso (from Paraguay), Buonanotte (from Argentina), Caicedo (from Ecuador), Mac Allister (from Argentina) are brought in from other leagues at a young age.
Stars for the team like Kaoru Mitoma have been brought it in from the Japanese J1 League was bought for a meagre £3 million in 2021. As of 2023, he currently has a market value of £50 million.
Brighton’s system depends on these young players growing and learning from veterans like Adam Lallana (34 years old), James Milner (37 years old) and Danny Welbeck (31 years old), who’ve had successful careers at some of the biggest Premier League teams.
These players are typically obtained as free transfers at the end of their contract period, and contribute to the team and organization both on and off the field.
Creating (and selling) superstars:
To put all this together, and understand the impact of how Brighton creates superstars, and eventually sell them for an enormous profit to one of the big-budget teams, two players stand out as ideal examples.
Alexis Mac Allister, 20 years old, was bought from AA Argentinos Juniors, which plays in the Argentinian first division, for £8 million in January 2019. He completed loan spells back at Argentinos Juniors and Boca Juniors, before returning to Brighton in January 2020.
Back at Brighton, he began making an impact, eventually scoring 10 goals the 2022/23 season and being a dominant midfield player.
4 years later, at 24 years old, he was sold to Liverpool in June 2023 for reported fee of £55 million, for a net profit of £47 million.
Moises Caicedo, 20 years old at the time, was bought from Independiente del Valle, an top-flight Ecuadorian team, for an undisclosed amount, although transfermarkt.us lists it as £28 million.
This seems like a hefty fee, for someone whose market value at the time was a meagre £5 million. After being let out on loan for a year at 2nd tier Belgian team Beerschot V.A., he emerged in the premier league in the 2022/23 season as a defensive midfield threat, with a strong defensive presence and excellent passing skills.
He was awarded Brighton’s Player of the Season and the Player’s Player of the Season, voted by his peers as the best in the team. His market value shot up, with bids from Arsenal and Chelsea for £70 million and £80 million being rejected.
On 10 August 2023, reports suggested that Liverpool and Brighton had agreed to a £111 million fee. But a couple days later, on 12 August 2023, Chelsea swooped back in with a whopping £115 million fee, inclusive of add-ons. That provides Brighton with a net profit of £87 million.
Football’s Moneyball is here:
We’ve seen this before in other teams, as I’ve written previously. But Brighton’s revolution is exemplary, competing and beating teams with bigger budgets, and arguably, more talent on paper.
A very similar story is seen in fellow Premier League team, Brentford FC. Brentford, who had the lowest wages paid in the 2022/23 season, finished 9th that season, by following a similar data-driven method. Matthew Benham, who actually worked under Tony Bloom, followed a very similar trajectory to Bloom and started a research hub for sports betting called SportsOdds.
He eventually bought a major stake in struggling Brentford, and converted them into a successful Premier League team from the depths of English football.
Seeing these teams evolve and compete with the big teams week in and week out has been an absolute joy over the last few years.
And chances are that we’ll be seeing more of these David & Goliath stories in the very near future.
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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-studies-why-brighton-holve-albion-fc-king-transfer/
https://theathletic.com/4237821/2023/04/21/brighton-scouting-premier-league-tony-bloom/
https://theathletic.com/4095092/2023/01/18/brighton-setting-standard/
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