There were a few sleepless nights for\u00a0Brighton & Hove Albion CEO Paul Barber following a board meeting a couple of weeks ago.<\/p>\n
The club\u2019s executive team had made a three-hour, 60-slide presentation to owner and chairman Tony Bloom on April 16 about the construction of the first purpose-built women\u2019s stadium in the United Kingdom and Europe.<\/p>\n
Bloom wanted some time to think about the proposal. Last week, he gave the green light to the project called \u2018Built For Her\u2019.<\/p>\n
The club owner will fund the 10,000-minimum-capacity stadium, which will cost around \u00a375million to \u00a380million ($101m to $108m) and be built by 2030 at the latest. However, the club is open to government funding. \u201cI see it as part of the football club as a whole,\u201d Bloom told media on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
It is a statement of intent, a signal to the Women\u2019s Super League (WSL) and the rest of the world that Brighton continue to push boundaries in the women\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shows the culture of a football club,\u201d said former Chelsea great and now Brighton player Fran Kirby, who believes the new stadium will be a \u201cbig attraction\u201d to retaining and recruiting talent. \u201cWe\u2019re not just sitting still, happy with where our women\u2019s team is at. All I\u2019ve ever cared about is playing for teams that care about women\u2019s football.\u201d<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s stadium \u2014 the third globally, following NWSL sides\u2019 Kansas City Current and Denver Summit\u2019s planned venue for 2028 \u2014 will be next to the Amex Express Stadium, where the club\u2019s men\u2019s Premier League side play, and be specifically designed for women\u2019s players and their fans, a different demographic to the men\u2019s game with different needs and behaviours, from merchandise activity to food consumption.<\/p>\n
The stadium will be physically joined to the Amex via a bridge and the club hope to be successful with the planning application because they already have proof of concept with the Amex. Such a close connection to the Amex was key as the club can share resources, such as the ticket office, club store, car parking and Falmer train station.<\/p>\n
Brighton, who will visit the aforementioned American teams\u2019 sites, are looking at everything through a women\u2019s football lens: whether the pitch surface can prevent certain injuries to female players; dressing room setups to cater, for example, for the split of male physios and female athletes; sufficient female toilet facilities, types of food and drink to serve match-goers and buggy parks for families.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019ve always felt that to show real commitment and respect for the game, we need to give the women\u2019s team an opportunity to have their own stage,\u201d said Barber. \u201cThe best way to do that was to build our own stadium. They (fans) have the right and deserve to see their women\u2019s and men\u2019s teams play in their city.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club researched potential sites around seven years ago and looked again in 2023, but land is not cheap in the south east of England. Brighton did not own Bennett\u2019s Field for many years and had leased it as a car park. The land was sold to property developers for student accommodation but the universities decided they no longer needed it and so Brighton bought it last year.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n\n An aerial view of the proposed stadium (Brighton & Hove Albion)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n WSL clubs have had to navigate the conundrum of outgrowing their smaller shared grounds and filling much larger club stadiums.<\/p>\n Arsenal, Chelsea, Leicester and Aston Villa have made their main club\u2019s stadium their women\u2019s home ground, with mixed success. However, Brighton, who attract around 2,000 to 3,000 fans on a matchday, believe a middle ground is more suitable.<\/p>\n Is a minimum 10,000-capacity stadium, which has some flexibility to increase but not much, ambitious enough, though? \u201cIt\u2019s about the right size for some time to come,\u201d said Barber, who has learned that staging top-class football matches in stadiums that are too big can be \u201cdetrimental\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can give a sense to the crowd that not everyone cares as much as they do, therefore it\u2019s not such a big event,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you\u2019re right-sizing a stadium, it\u2019s full, noisy and atmospheric, everyone feels that this is a major event that they want to be at, which women\u2019s football is, should be and will be even bigger in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Brighton also have the option to switch their biggest women\u2019s games to the Amex, due to reach a 33,000 capacity once the latest works have finished, and are hoping to play more of their WSL games there in the near future to start to drive audience behaviour.<\/p>\n But given the pace at which the women\u2019s game is growing, it is hard to forecast the next 10 years. What happens if the women\u2019s team outgrow their new stadium by 2035? \u201cWe\u2019ll cross that bridge when we come to it,\u201d said Barber.<\/p>\n He believes any learnings from the new women\u2019s stadium may be applied to modify the Amex, while the under-21 men\u2019s team and under-19 women\u2019s team could use the new arena, too.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone wants to be a Champions League team,\u201d said women\u2019s managing director Zoe Johnson. \u201cYou have to have your unique selling point. Having world-class infrastructure is very much a part of our vision.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t just about building a football stadium,\u201d added Barber. \u201cThis is historical for our sport and country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n