Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's Fan-First Media Machine

Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10

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Brighton & Hove Albion's Paul Camillin and Piers McDermott revealed how video content drives fan engagement to support the club's wider goals.

Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club currently sit in 11th place in the Premier League, but there's another ranking of England's topflight football teams in which the Seasiders sit at the top of the table.

According to a recent report YouTube report for Premier League clubs from Buzz My Videos, Brighton has an impressive average views per subscriber index of 510, which is the highest average views per subscriber among all Premier League clubs. It suggests a highly engaged fanbase, which, says Brighton's head of media and communications Paul Camillin, is the ultimate aim of the club's media and digital team.

Speaking at SVG Europe's FutureSPORT 2025 event which took place earlier this month (9 November), Camillin told attendees: It's about delivering the content fans want to see, which might be behind-the-scenes, or the more traditional content of post-match interviews and highlights. We try to be innovative and take fans as close to the action as possible.

Previously you wouldn't have dreamed of doing something like that; you'd have been absolutely roasted for even suggesting it. But when Roberto De Zerbi came here, we decided as soon as he stepped off the plane, we would have a camera under his nose.

Ultimately, it's about engagement: bums on seats, selling merchandise, and supporting the business' aims. But it's also about storytelling, and not everything needs a KPI. Community is huge for us; we wouldn't be sat here today if it wasn't for the Brighton and Hove community. And then there's servicing broadcasters, rights holders, commercial partners because they're integral to the income of the business.

Camillin likens the media and digital team to an in-house agency, while colleague and head of digital Piers McDermott divides the team's content offering into four pillars: Matchday', which has the biggest engagement spikes; Matchweek', which includes build-up, press conferences and the fallout from games; Originals', such as behind-the-scenes video, profiles and human stories; Beyond Football', which encompassed charity, lifestyle, culture, fashion, which are relatively new areas for football clubs to explore.

Within those pillars, content for Brighton's 13m fans around the world ranges from long-form to short-form including the men's team, women's team and academy across 20+ social channels, many of which are localised for countries such as Japan and regions like Latin America. It's about speaking authentically to different audiences based on their consumption habits, says McDermott.

Content is, of course, edited and tailored to match the expectations of users on each platform as well as the requirements of the algorithms. But the real strength, explains McDermott, is a level of access and trust beyond that which broadcasters can achieve.

After showing FutureSPORT attendees a clip of the players in the changing after a match being spoken to by the manager, McDermottt says: Often, when [broadcasters interview players] you look at players and their reactions is more media trained and more reserved, whereas that clip is pretty raw; that's after a game, and that's a manager addressing the players in real time, and you're seeing their reactions. So, for a fan, that's a money can't buy experience, essentially.

We have a super talented team of experts, video creators and editors and it's a testament to the social media teams to have built such trust and a relationship with the players that they can just go in after a game, and the players don't clam up.

Camillin says that although the UK is a long way behind the US in terms of access, where locker room doors are regularly thrown open, huge progress has been made in getting viewers and fans closer to players and even further behind the scenes.

We're on a journey, And I think more you'll see more of this type of [behind the scenes] content. It's what the broadcasters want, because it's what the viewers and the global audience wants; they don't want to hear from a manager an hour before kick-off and 15 minutes after. They want to be hearing from them, mic'ed up on the touch line all these sorts of things and I think that will come. It'll take time, but the desire to innovate is there, and I think there is a need to innovate to keep the Premier League the best league in the world.

Speaking about the post-match changing room clip, Camillin adds: I've been doing this job 27 years, and previously you wouldn't have dreamed of doing something like that; you'd have been absolutely roasted for even suggesting it. But when Roberto De Zerbi came here, we decided as soon as he stepped off the plane, we would have a camera under his nose. We thought we were really pushing the boundaries, and we literally filmed everything. And after about two weeks, he said to me, it was the norm in Ukraine (De Zerbi joined Brighton from Shakhtar Donetsk) and that he was used to it.

So it's the way it's going, and I think it's the way it will continue to go, with more of that behind-the-scenes content for the broadcasters, for the clubs, and for traditional media.

FutureSPORT 2025: Picture gallery from the 6 November event in Brighton here

LINK:	https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/inside-brighton-hove-albions-...
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