0:00 I got an email. It said, Jordan, love the channel. Have you noticed how football is so data-driven today? Are there lots of companies making millions now these clubs are using more data services? Also, does all this data genuinely help clubs make more money? Oscar came to the right place. I've wondered this too. There are statistics everywhere. Players wear fitness trackers all the time. And performance metrics are pivotal to transfers in the modern era. Oscar agreed. He continued by saying, A piece of my soul dies whenever I see total touches in the opponent's box and XG on Sky Sports. So thought I'd email in and see if you can shed some light. Love your content. I watch every video. Oscar, like you and the thousands others that watch my videos and read my newsletters every week, is a big thinker. And I had the perfect idea
0:46 how to answer his questions. This is Sean Bay. He is the current Chief of Staff at Burnley Football Club and he is also the ex-Academy Director and CEO of Valencia Football Club. He too follows my platform, so I thought I'd ask him directly. I remember in Valencia, we were also doing tests, for example, for our goalkeepers. They would measure the spaces between your joints and the hands to kind of estimate your future height. How crazy is that? I'm Jordan. I'm on a mission to bring the business of sport to a million people. So today, along with the help of Lukas Novik, we are set out to understand the companies that are benefiting from this data boom and to truly answer the question, is all of this data making football clubs more money? To start, we should look no further than the South Coast of the UK. Brighton are one of the best success stories in the Premier League. They bought
1:34 Moises Caicedo for £4 million. They sold him for £115 million. They bought Mark Cucurella for £15 million. They sold him for £50 million. They bought Matoma, for £3 million, they recently rejected a bid for him for £55 million. How on earth are they able to find such talents and make so much money from them? What are they doing that other clubs haven't quite managed to figure out? Well, the answer lies in their secret weapon, Jamestown Analytics. Wait, what? I know what you're thinking. What the Christ is Jamestown Analytics? Yeah, look at their website. It's the most basic thing ever. But this company is the secret sauce that has catapulted Brighton to one of the most profitable clubs in the Premier League. In fact, when asked, David Weir, Brighton's technical director, said this. We're fortunate to have access to all the information from
2:23 every league in the world, which you'd never be able to cover on a scouting, subjective, eyes-on basis. In short, Jamestown is a data company that provides advanced analytics and data-driven insights to the teams that use it. And as I mentioned before, Brighton have been flourishing with its use. Those three transfers I mentioned before are not the only ones. They bought McAllister for under £7 million, sold him for £35 million. Trossard, £15 million, sold for £27. They also have a lot of other talented players in the team right now, which they didn't buy for much, and they probably will sell for a lot more. The analytics from Jamestown has allowed them to identify cheap talent, buy them, nurture them, and then sell them for much more profit. To give you an idea, in the four years from 2019 to 2023, Brighton, yes,
3:12 Brighton were the most profitable club in the Premier League. How mad is that? So who the f*** with Jamestown and why do Brighton have access to them and no one else? Well, to answer both of those questions, we have to look no further than this man. My newsletter is growing faster than ever. People like Oscar and thousands more get an email about the business of sport every Monday at 11am UK time. Join the community by clicking on the first link in the description below. Now, Here is that man without a blur on his face. Do you know who he is yet? Tony Bloom is the owner of Brighton and he is a very successful man. You ever heard of Premier Bet, a betting company in the UK? Well, he started his career there as a trader and later he founded Star Lizard, a sports betting consultancy company that kind of operates like a hedge fund. Star Lizard takes complex data analytics and applies it to sports betting markets, creating an edge for their customers. Jamestown
3:59 became an offshoot of Star Lizard. So now you're understanding why Brighton under the ownership of Tony Bloom have access to Jamestown Analytics and no one else does. But it's no one else in the Premier League. Castellon is a Spanish football club. They're owned by another CEO who is also a data geek. They recently became a Jamestown client and lo and behold got promoted from the third tier of Spanish football to the second tier of Spanish football. Como FC, a club I also follow closely, coached by Cesc Fabregas at the time of recording this video, also are Jamestown customers. They too got promoted from Serie B to Serie R very recently. Brighton, as we have seen, have some of the most lucrative transfer dealings in the whole of Europe. It's not a coincidence that Jamestown has been behind all three of these clubs in recent times.
4:45 The CEO of Jamestown is a chap called Johan. He too is a sports better and, funnily enough, in August of 2024 won the backgammon world championships. Information about him, the revenue of Jamestown Analytics, the number of employees at Jamestown Analytics, the valuation of the company are very difficult to come by. But Christ, the impact that they've had on Brighton alone has been evident. What's difficult for me is to understand what they want to do with the business. Do they want to be a company that every team uses, only select team users? Do they want to be a massive company that exits into the future? Remains to be seen. Enterprise value is difficult to pin down for Jamestown, but despite not being on the cap table, Tony Bloom is definitely affiliated with the business. So you can track the enterprise value of the business to the enterprise value of Brighton. And that's only been going one way in recent years. Similarly,
5:30 Another Premier League team that has seen their enterprise value skyrocket in recent years is Brentford. Brentford are a club that goes crazy with their use of performance indicators. If you've been following me for some time, you'll know that Brentford are one of my favourite stories in all of sports. On their journey to the Premier League, data became very important to them. They tracked insights into things like player movements, passing patterns, and opponent set-piece strategies. Tools like heat maps and XG... allows the coaching staff to create models to optimise game plans and make decisions during matches. A company which helps clubs do this is Catapult Sports. You ever seen football players wear these sports bras? They are a wearables company that gives clubs really detailed insights into their players who wear them. In fact, Sean at Burnley echoed this sentiment. At least in Burnley, most of the big decisions we are now at least always asking the question like, what does
6:18 the data show? We are looking at set pieces. It is no longer just a case of, I think that A long corner is better than a short corner. Like why? Because I have been doing it all my life this way. For example, when you're doing scouting or signing players, we look at the physical markers. Are they fit enough or physically equipped or performing consistently at the levels that are required for the Premier League or the Championship? The crazy thing is, Catapult are an Australian company. They have 400 staff worldwide in over 24 locations around the world. And they work with hundreds of teams at all levels. NFL, Premier League, NBA, hockey, you name it. If there's one thing that underpins the growth of data in sport is their results last year. In their financial report for 2024, Dr. Adir Shiffman, their
7:06 executive chairman, said the company had crossed some significant financial milestones. $100 million in revenue achieved, 20% year-on-year growth, 96.5% client retention. They also achieved over $4 million in EBITDA, a significant increase on the previous year. There's a synergy here and this is a direct answer to Oscar's question. Clubs around the world are becoming far more data focused and as a result the data analytics companies are primely placed. They are making a lot more money now than they ever have done before. This is reflected in the share price for Catapult. Look at this over the last five years. It's looking delicious. What's interesting is looking at my own data as a content creator and when I do I see that a lot of you who are watching these videos aren't actually subscribed to my channel. Yes, I sound like Stephen Bartlett right now but I didn't realize how much this helps me out. So if you
7:53 like these videos and you made it this far, please consider subscribing to my channel. There are lots more videos coming and the more of you in here, the better they can become. Now, there are two more things about data before we get out of here. The first is the inference of data. It's all good having the metrics, but how do you use them? As Sean puts out, just having the numbers isn't everything. The limitation is that this data is based on what has really happened. It can tell you the future, but At least it tells you objectively that until this day, this is true. You can't make any other arguments against that. You see, there are some softer things that data can't provide. But one part that a lot of, firstly, that a lot of people are missing will be 80% where the person is not doing well or without the ball. And then also when the person is entering
8:40 the pitch, leaving the pitch, the interactions with the teammates, interaction with the people. So So these are very, very good alternative sources of information, extra tidbits on what is the person like, right? So I think that is absolutely important where data can't really give you a proper score in terms of like, is this firstly, generally a good human being? And secondly, whether the person is a good fit into your team. From what I can see, clubs and executives who are the best at inferring what the data tells them will be the ones that succeed. It did make me think about someone in particular especially considering that Sean works at Burnley Football Club. You spent some time with Vinny, Vincent Kompany. We discussed, I guess, types of coaches earlier, data-driven, feeling, more gut instinct. Where does Vinny rank on the spectrum? Is he a feelings person
9:27 or is he a data-driven person as well? If you want to see the answer to that question, subscribe to my newsletter. Newsletter subscribers will get access to this interview in full. The final way in which data is changing football is with player contracts. One of the examples from one of the previous videos I've done is with this man. The greatest midfielder in recent history in the Premier League. In 2020, Kevin De Bruyne wanted a new contract. He was at the peak of his powers and he was playing for the best team in the country. As much as it pains me to say. Instead of getting an agent to negotiate his deal, he went to these guys. Analytics FC. This is a pretty unique case study in data usage in sport. Their website spills this out clearer than I can. KDB wanted Analytics FC to create a report showing his contribution to Manchester City. The data analysis compared De Bruyne's
10:15 output relative to others in Europe. They included his on-pitch contributions and his financial values to Manchester City. The findings were interesting. They concluded that De Bruyne is one of the top talents in Europe when it comes to chance creation. De Bruyne's output marked him as one of the top players in Europe with Analytics FC's GDA model. which showed the positive or negative impact of every single touch of the ball that he had on the pitch. The analysis also made companions with the salaries of other players in Europe and how their GDA compared to Kevin's. How fascinating was this? The result? Kevin De Bruyne signed a five-year, £104 million contract with Manchester City. Kevin may have got that money without the use of Analytics FC and just by using a conventional agent. But this data company meant that he did not need
11:03 an agent. It remains to be seen what he paid for Analytics FC for this analysis. But if you've watched my previous video on football transfers, you'll have an indication as to what most Premier League players pay in agency fees. On a deal of that size, you probably imagine Kevin De Bruyne has saved himself two, maybe three million pounds. Also, it could be argued that an agent may not have done the analysis at the depth that Analytics FC could have, meaning they might not even have negotiated as much money. We'll never know. But what a fascinating use case. Analytics FC are a lean company. They have 10 employees in Somerset, England. Since then, they've grown a large roster of customers. At the very beginning of this video, Oscar asked two questions. Are there data companies out there making millions? Now there are more clubs seeking data services. He also asked, does all of this data genuinely help clubs make more money?
11:52 As you've seen in the last 10 minutes, the answers to both those questions are unequivocally yes. I mentioned before, data, is very important in the transfers of football players at the moment. Click right here to get a deep dive into how transfers work and how much agents are making. I'm Jordan. Thank you for watching.
