Brighton & Hove Albion have finished top of the Built Different Index, a study of all 92 clubs in the Premier League and EFL, with a weighted score of 1,894 points — 79 clear of Swansea City. Liverpool and Manchester United finished outside the top ten. By Nick Staunton.
Before anyone frames this as a verdict on the club’s recruitment, it is worth knowing what was measured.
What It Actually Ranks
The index was compiled by Midnite, a betting operator, using nine metrics: shortest and longest away trip, total distance travelled, average home capacity utilisation, average attendance as a share of local authority population, average squad age, average wind speed, average rainfall against win percentage, and managerial sackings over five seasons.
Wind speed. Barrow came top of that one, at 14.9mph.
So this is a novelty ranking rather than an assessment of how clubs are run, and Swansea’s second place is largely a function of being a Welsh club in an English league, where an away trip can become a full day’s expedition.
The Number That Does Matter
One measure in the index is genuinely striking, and it is the one Albion led.
Midnite found Brighton recorded the highest average attendance as a share of local authority population of any club in the country last season, at 31.5%. Whatever the precise basis of that calculation, the underlying point holds: relative to the size of the city it draws from, no club in England fills its ground like Albion.
That is a real achievement and it is not an accident. This is a club that was playing at Withdean athletics track twenty years ago, with temporary stands and a running track between the crowd and the pitch, having spent two seasons at Gillingham. The Amex opened in 2011. The proportion of this city that now goes is the return on that.
It also has a straightforward commercial consequence. A club drawing that share of its local population has a season ticket base that does not depend on results, which is precisely what allows the recruitment model everyone admires — sell Caicedo, sell Cucurella, sell Welbeck, and the ground still fills.
The Caveat
Midnite is a gambling company and this index exists to be written about. It has worked, since it is currently in Goal.com, Yahoo and now here.
None of which makes the attendance figure less impressive. It just means the trophy is not one anybody was competing for.
Albion play Bologna at the Amex on Saturday 15 August, the final pre-season fixture before the league begins.
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