Brighton’s Transfer Genius Myth: Busted | OneFootball

I was chatting with Gary Striker the other day and he wouldn’t stop going on about Brighton and their business model of scooping up low-cost players, developing them, and then selling them off and bathing in the profits. He had some data points to back up his claims, too, like the recent $112M rumors around Kaoru Mitoma heading to Al Nassr. Or Marc Cucurella’s $67.6M transfer to Chelsea. And Leandro Trossard’s $25M transfer to Arsenal.

Okay, I thought, he might have something here. But I never take Gary at his word. And it turns out I was right to doubt him.

I Got 99 Problems, But Finding Data Ain’t One.

I did some digging into Brighton’s transfer history at Transfermarkt, and found that while Gary’s examples do represent very savvy business in the world of individual player purchases and sales, the overall picture is a little less rosy.

The Data

Brighton’s overall transfer history for the past five years.

The Pretty Picture

From the 2020-21 through 2023-24 seasons Brighton did indeed operate as the very epitome of a “buy low; sell high” talent factory. They registered a staggering $144.7M profit off transfer fees, mostly through this list below (all numbers = millions, currency is U.S. dollars converted from Euros).

The Ugly Truth

In 2024-25 alone, Brighton have incurred a $202.2M LOSS from bringing in players. That’s nearly the same total spend from the previous three years, combined. This also doesn’t take into account that from 2015-2020, the period during which Brighton was promoted into the Premier League (which happened in 2017), they also accumulated ANOTHER $231.1M in transfer costs. Granted, this is fairly normal for any club making the leap from the Championship, but $431.3M over ten years is a LOT of debt.

So there’s nothing about either data set that says Gary is completely off base, he’s just selective about his view. Ah, statistics! Per his point, some of those player profits are eye-popping. But the fact remains… without a Mitoma transfer at that astronomical Saudi-fueled $112M price tag Brighton will be seriously in the hole no matter how successful 2021-2024 was.

It suddenly puts that entire Al Nassr offer into perspective, doesn’t it? Should Brighton take the money? Comment below.