Brighton & Hove Albion FC: The Tony Bloom Project

In recent times, fans have become accustomed to seeing teams that historically have not been the most renowned and recognized in football become quite competitive thanks to significant economic investments from foreign capital, such as Manchester City and Paris Saint Germain being the most known cases. However, there are clubs that take the “difficult” path and form a project to grow little by little until they reach the point of getting a lot of credit and recognition all over the world. One of those clubs that has currently reaped the fruit of its labour over many years is Brighton & Hove Albion.

Embed from Getty Images

The main person responsible for this growth has been Tony Bloom, a millionaire from Brighton who made his fortune through poker and was raised in a family of fans of the club with some members who came to have management positions within the institution. In 2009, Bloom decided to make an investment of 93 million pounds in the new stadium that he had started work on a few months earlier and become the club’s largest shareholder.

Unlike other millionaires who have entered the world of football, Bloom started a project that began in League One and focused on improving the club in many ways, such as the facilities or the aforementioned investment in the new stadium. The promotion was achieved in 2011 and after 6 years in the Championship, Brighton reached the Premier League in 2017.

Bloom’s idea was to gradually improve the club in all possible aspects to prepare it for its arrival to the Premier League, which was the objective since the club’s acquisition. In terms of player signings, the idea was to use Bloom’s huge database through his company StarLizard to bring in players with enough potential to play in the top tier of English football but at a cost that was affordable for Brighton.

An example of this philosophy is the signing of Pascal Gross in the 2017-18 season, his first in the Premier League under Bloom’s management, coming from FC Ingolstadt and who to date continues to be an important player for the club. Something similar happened with Robert Sánchez, who was signed from the Levante youth teams at the age of 15 and currently has more than 80 appearances with the first team and is also a Spain international.

As in the cases of Gross and Sánchez, the other path that Brighton has taken is to sign players for a low price, get a good return on them, and then sell them at a considerably higher price. The best example of this was that of Marc Cucurella who came to the club from Getafe for 15 million pounds and was bought by Chelsea for 60 million a year later.

Brighton has also focused on improving its academy both in terms of facilities (one of the best in England) and players, developing both foreigners like Robert Sánchez and Englishmen like Ben White (signed by Arsenal for 50 million pounds) or Evan Ferguson, one of the standout performers in this season. The growth of the club has been such that, in its first 4 seasons in the Premier League, it remained between 15th and 17th places, while in the past it reached the ninth place and in the present, it is seventh, 4 points behind the fifth place with two games less than Tottenham (fifth place).

The transfer philosophy makes it possible to obtain profits that are later invested in the club again and that are what has maintained the constant growth of Brighton who, thanks to this season, can find themselves playing in European competitions in the next, as well as having some of the most important players. Premier League highlights today such as Mitoma, MacAllister, or Caicedo, which can probably be sold for huge amounts of money and thus guarantee the viability of the project for many more years.

Understand Alexis Mac Allister and his camp consider summer move as 100% guaranteed. The expectation is for an early transfer. 🔵🇦🇷

Alexis will give his best for Brighton until June.

🔴 Liverpool and Man United will discuss with player side soon.

🎥 https://t.co/DeD2iA0zMB pic.twitter.com/7yYHsssFJ0

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) April 17, 2023