Jason Ayto was appointed Sporting Director at Brighton and Hove Albion on 15th September 2025.

Hailing from Nottinghamshire, Jason studied at the University of Leicester, and is multi-lingual, speaking Portuguese and Spanish as well as his native English. He had a spell in the US with a start-up football club in Chicago and had several years’ experience from his time working at a sports management company in London.

He joined Norwich in the 2010s in a senior Academy role. Gregg Broughton said “In my first year at Norwich we brought in Jason to work with us on a placement. Jason helped us do a very precise piece of work on UK recruitment to decide what boroughs within the south-east of England we were going to put our resources in. We chose four of five boroughs that we threw all of our resource into, in terms of talent ID and coaching, especially within London. Going into London was something Norwich had never done before. It’s only recently, despite that work starting in 2012, that the club started to see the benefits with the likes of Jonathan Rowe and Abu Kamara breaking into the City first team. Ayto’s time at Carrow Road spanned the club’s 2013 FA Youth Cup winning triumph under current technical director Neil Adams.

He later moved onto Arsenal, where he worked with City’s sporting director, Ben Knapper, before stepping in as interim sporting director at the Gunners in November 2024 when Edu left

Regarding his Brighton appointment, he said "This is a special club, admired across the footballing world for its culture, ambition and smart thinking, all of which has underpinned some remarkable progress in recent years To be joining at a time when there is such a strong desire to build on those excellent foundations, innovate further, and bring success is incredibly exciting. I’m looking forward to getting started and working with, and supporting both our head coaches Fabian Hurzeler and Dario Vidosic (women’s head coach), and their respective playing squads.”