The growing global profile and fanbase of Brighton & Hove Albion

One of the many lines that fans of Chelsea, Manchester United, Spurs and the other multibillion pound sports franchises throw at Brighton to argue we are a small club and no threat to the ‘Big Six’ is that the Albion do not have a global fanbase. How true is that anymore?

Six years in the Premier League has exposed us to an enormous worldwide audience. By far the world’s most popular sports league, it attracts around 4.7 billion viewers internationally.

Over the next three seasons, income from broadcasting deals will top £10 billion with overseas rights surpassing domestic revenue for the first time.

Of course, all of our games – not just those against the big names – are televised internationally to over 200 territories, including the Saturday 3pm ones.

Viewers from Asia to South American can watch the Albion live each and every week, regardless of time or day. It is only domestic broadcasters Sky and BT/TNT that cause our fixtures to be shifted.

Even in the US, with competition from baseball, American football, basketball, cage fighting and whatever Donald Trump is up to today, individual games drew viewing figures of up to 1.9 million last season.

Those numbers are dwarfed by the 147 million who watch in India, and the 300 million who watch in China. Players from neither of those nations or the US have yet featured for the Albion at the Amex, but plenty from other nations, regions and continents have.

For over a decade now we have welcomed European players to the Amex. Spanish, German, French, Belgian and Dutch – many of them full internationals – have become fan favourites. Our Europa League involvement will further boost the clubs profile across the continent.

At any game last season you could see the support from Japanese fans for Kaoru Mitoma. At Wembley for the FA Cup semi final against United, I chatted to one fan who had flown over just to watch the game and buy a shirt at the Amex the following Monday.

The Amex of course is a venue beloved by Japanese sports fans for their shock win there over South Africa in the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

Our current and recent South American contingent – Julio Enciso, Pervis Estupinan, Moises Caicedo, Facundo Buonanotte and Alexis MacAllister – will have won over many thousands of fans to the Albion across that continent, particularly Ecuador and Argentina.

Now Brazilian Joao Pedro adds to our profile in that vast country next season. I feel it is likely there will be more additions to the squad from South America before the window closes.

We know that Yves Bissouma, Percy Tau and Enock Mwepu did the same for many African-based fans, plenty of whom have stuck with us. Soo too Australians, for whom Maty Ryan and Aaron Mooy paved the way for possible future star Cameron Peupion.

The recent return of Tomer Hemed to the Amex reminded me of the huge contribution he and fellow Israeli international Beram Kayal made to our promotion season. Both were a pleasure to meet.

Whilst perhaps the majority of fan groups in the US and Australia are migrants from the UK, or ex-pats as we refer to ourselves when moving abroad, support has been growing beyond the Brits, as Douglas Ellison wrote two years ago with his piece How Brighton are becoming big in the United States.

So, what does this growing global profile and fanbase deliver in practical terms? Aside from the ballooning revenue from TV rights, presumably income from merchandise and shirt sales overseas is growing, so the club will be benefiting from that.

It is estimated that Premier League football brings around a billion pounds to the Brighton & Hove region economy. Raising the global profile of the city can only bring benefits in terms of jobs and investment.

Aside from the finances, what about the human element? Whether someone is a lifelong local fan who has moved away from the UK, or someone in Jakarta, Quito, Mumbai or Melbourne who have only recently become supporters of the club, those of us lucky enough to go to the Amex regularly should make them feel welcome and involved.

Just because you cannot be here physically does not make you a “plastic” fan. Those flying to Brighton from Japan or Ecuador are dedicating huge amounts of money and time to supporting the Albion, beyond what many of us Sussex-based supporters do.

Social media can go a long way to connecting with football fans in every corner of the planet. The Albion now have well over a million followers on Instagram (compared to around 15 to 40 million for the ‘Big Six’), but maybe there’s more we can do to engage overseas supporters in the match day experience.

During the pandemic, when none of us could go, some clubs featured fans at home via Zoom on the big screens. How about doing that pre-match or half-time for fan groups in different countries?

A century ago, when my grandfather watched games on the Goldstone Ground East Terrace, the vast majority of those 19,000 or so watching with him would have lived a short walk or bus ride from the Old Shoreham Road.

Those who could not attend the Goldstone could read match reports in local newspapers but beyond that, there was little way of following the fortunes of the Albion in Division Three South.

Today, our Premier League games are shown live across the world and the Seagulls family could well be counted in the hundreds of thousands or even millions.

We should celebrate that, and open up our club to them. We are Brighton and Hove Albion, and we are known around the world.

Warren Morgan @WarrenBHAFC