𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

What is the nature of Barber’s investment?

A club statement said that Barber is now the second-largest shareholder behind Bloom with 1.5 per cent of the total shares in existence.

Bloom said: “He has already committed to the club (with a contract) until at least 2030, and we wanted to offer him this opportunity to further commit, and also to recognise his level of service and loyalty to the club. I regard Paul as the best chief executive in football and I am delighted he is now a co-owner of the club.”

Barber paid £350,000 for 1.45million type ‘G’ shares, a new class of shares which nobody else owns. He owns 1.5 per cent of the club’s shares but does not get a vote on anything until the end of June 2030. So, effectively, he has to hold the shares for five years before getting a say.

How can voting rights be used?

Bloom’s percentage power means that any strategic decisions are totally in his control. Shareholders with voting rights get a vote at the annual general meeting on minor administrative matters — for example, the appointment of auditors or a change of bankers.

What about Fatboy Slim?

Norman Quentin Cook, to give him his proper full name, owns Pig City Incorporated Limited, who in turn own 0.79 per cent of the club. In common with other minority shareholders, the DJ’s interest dates back to the turbulent pre-Bloom era, when no one individual controlled the club.

In 2002, Cook invested £500,000 in the club as part of a £4.5million restructuring of the shares under former chairman and saviour Dick Knight, following a buyout in February of that year of Knight’s controversial predecessor Bill Archer. Knight became the biggest single shareholder at that time with 30 per cent for an investment of over £1.36m.

Archer, having overseen the sale of the Goldstone Ground — the club’s home for 95 years — without an alternative in place, accepted a £700,000 pay-off in May 2002 for loans totalling around £1.4m.

Cook’s record label, appropriately named Skint, sponsored shirts for a period during the Withdean Stadium era. The ground was renamed Palookaville — a new album he had in production at that time — for one game, with the blessing of the FA. He remains a big supporter, attending games when his schedule allows and also sometimes the AGM.

Fatboy Slim and Dick Knight pictured for the release of ‘Palookaville’ in October 2004 (Dave Etheridge-Barnes/Getty Images)

The Kidger Family

Lifelong fan Chris Kidger joined the Brighton board in May 2002, investing £500,000. Kidger and his wife Liz founded the Friday-Ad in 1975, the UK’s first free classified paper. Based in Hickstead, 12 miles north of Brighton, the publication brought buyers and sellers together simply and at low cost, an idea stemming from the difficulty faced by the couple in trying to sell their car.

Friday-Ad’s 0.53 per cent stake in the football club is held collectively by the Kidger family. Chris is still active. He is a season-ticket holder with three of the couple’s sons in a family of 10. Another son, Sam, has been chief executive for the past nine years of the Friday Media Group, which stemmed from the Friday-Ad brand. The group owns more than 30 companies in marketplaces, recruitment, web services and retail.

Although Sam is a West Ham fan, he is also an honorary Brighton supporter. Between 2010 and 2013, he served on the board of trustees for Albion in the Community, the club’s charitable arm.

Chapman the Seagull

Chapman plays down his part in Brighton becoming known as ‘Seagulls’ by fans during the 1970s. He told the club’s matchday programme after retiring from the board last year: “It’s a bit unfair that I always get mentioned when this topic comes up because I was one of five or six lads, mates, who came up with the name. We were in the pub together and after a few beers, ‘Seagulls’ was the cry. Thankfully, it’s stuck ever since.”

Although shy about his role in the pseudonym, the 0.48 per cent stakeholder has made a major contribution to Brighton’s rise across a variety of roles. In 1982, Chapman formed Adenstar Developments Limited, which grew into one of the largest construction companies in south east England.

Adenstar was involved in the building work to convert Withdean Stadium — then an athletics track — into a stadium temporarily fit for fourth-tier football as the club aimed to return to Brighton. From 1997 to 1999, Brighton groundshared with Gillingham, a team based 75 miles away in Kent. Chapman became an investor and director in 1999.

Chapman put his knowledge of the construction industry to good use, retiring from Adenstar in 2010 to project manage the move into the Amex in 2011 and the new training centre at Lancing three years later. He found time to work between 2012 and 2014 on stadia for Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 World Cup and to be Brighton’s interim chief executive for a few months before Barber’s appointment in 2012.

For good measure, he was also chair of Brighton’s women’s team when they won promotion to the Women’s Super League in 2016.

Who else has voting rights?

The biggest stakeholder with voting rights after Bloom is Tracy Stone-Brown (1.16 per cent). The 63-year-old’s shares were transferred in July 2021 from her late husband, William. Better known as Bill, the London-based reinsurance specialist put £500,000 into the club with Cook in 2002. Neither of them wanted a seat on the board for their investment.

Stone-Brown is a director of TSB Capital Ventures Limited, a company that buys and sells real estate. She is a loyal supporter, attending matches at the Amex on multiple occasions every season and also the AGM.

Bloom’s uncle, Ray, (0.56 per cent stake) first joined the Brighton board in the mid-1980s. The now 79-year-old is the largest individual stakeholder of Regent Exhibitions Limited, which owns travel industry trade shows staged annually in Frankfurt in Germany and Las Vegas in the United States.

Tony is a director and he owns 25 per cent of the company. Bloom’s love of Brighton since childhood stems from Ray’s late father, Harry, who was vice-chairman of the club for seven years during the 1970s.

Tony Bloom, right, celebrates Brighton winning League One with manager Gus Poyet in 2011 (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Other minority owners with a stake of 0.02 per cent or less include Marc Sugarman and Peter Godfrey. Along with Chapman, Sugarman, a chartered accountant, relinquished his role as a non-executive director of the board in June 2024. He has been a trustee of Albion in the Community since 2009.

Godfrey has been a board member since 2010. He was the president of the global network services division of American Express when the stadium naming rights deal with Brighton’s long-serving main sponsors was agreed.

Why is Knight no longer a shareholder?

Bloom allowed minority shareholders to sell their shares to him. Some, including Knight, took up the offer; others chose to keep their shares. They have less than four per cent of the voting shares between them, but the minority owners have all played a part as well in Brighton’s rise.

Many of them put money into the club when it was most needed. To paraphrase the title of Fatboy Slim’s 1998 album, they’ve come a long way, baby.