⚽️ Brentford B: The West London Rebels

Welcome to the The Long Play. A weekly newsletter breaking down the business behind sport in the UK and Europe. Today, we begin by breaking down a brilliant piece of economics by West London’s Brentford Football Club.

We finish with news of the largest contract in NFL history!

Josh Bohui and Ian Carlo Poveda are two players who spent several years being developed by Brentford’s Academy.

After 5 years as a bright prospect at Brentford from the ages of 11 to 16, Bohui signed for Manchester United in August 2016. Poveda signed for City a few weeks earlier for a reported fee of £30,000.

Unfortunately, clubs like Brentford always run the risk of having their brightest talent poached by bigger clubs; these two impressive youngsters were the final straw.

Academies are expensive to operate. When forming an academy a club must enrol into the EPPP System (Elite Player Performance Program).

EPPP forces EFL clubs to play against each other and puts a fixed transfer-fee on players based on their experience.

They also cost circa £2.0m/year to run.

In the Summer of 2016 Brentford announced a restructure, and closed their academy in favour of a Brentford B team, citing the EPPP as the reason for their closure.

Quite simply, they wanted a more efficient pathway for players to make it to the top level as they were not producing enough players who made it to their First Team.

As a result of the closure they:

• Save £2.0m/year

• Do not sign any players under the age of 16

• Focus entirely on recruiting young players between 17 and 20 who have been released by academies in the Premier League, as well as talent from “undervalued markets” overseas

The results took time to show, but boy did they come.

Removing yourself from the EPPP means your club now has complete control over their own fixtures. Brentford can play whoever they want.

They can play Premier League U23 sides, National League sides, even teams from other countries.

To name just a few, last year Brentford B played FC Bordeaux in France, FC Seoul of South Korea, Astana from Kazakhstan, AFC Wimbledon from the lower leagues and Chelsea, from the Premier League.

The season before that they famously beat Bayern Munich 5-2 in a snowy day in Germany.

This exposure to other styles of football is widely seen as one of the biggest advantages of the removal from the EPPP.

Similarly, in the 5 seasons since they have closed the Academy NINETEEN players have graduated from Brentford B to the first team.

Many of these players have been sold for healthy profit:

• Ollie Watkins: £1.8m from Exeter —> sold to Aston Villa £28.4m

• Saïd Benrahma: £2.7m from Nice —> sold to West Ham £21.75m

• Neal Maupay: £1.8m from Saint Étienne —> sold to Brighton £20.00m

These are just three players bought under the new Brentford policy sold for healthy profit in just three seasons.

Brentford won promotion to the Premier League this summer just 5 seasons are closing their academy.

Since then:

• Bolton have downgraded their academy

• Salford City scrapped their academy before the start of the 2020–2021 season.

• Birmingham City announced they would be replacing their Development Squad with a B Team and their academy with a C Team

Brentford, under Matt Benham’s ownership are ahead of their time and one of the best success stories in English Football. They are now heavy favourites to stay in the Premier League securing a big financial windfall for the club.

As a tip from me, keep your eyes peeled on Mads Rasmussen. Their 22yo right-back is one of the nineteen players who have graduated from their B Team having signed from Denmark in 2019.

Rumours suggest he may be the next healthy sale from the B-Team!

The ROI on the Academy closure is rising exponentially with every passing year.

We finish today with news of the biggest contract in NFL History. Joe Burrow, quarterback for the Cincinnatti Bengals signed a 5yr/$275m contract on Friday with a whopping $219m guaranteed.

The NFL returned this week and this summer we saw the “largest NFL contract” broken four times:

If we focus solely on the guaranteed portion the $219m works out to $842k/week or £668k/week.

Fully guaranteed for 5 years.

Good going Joe.