The Chicago Bees Fan Club was launched in October 2022 when Megan Bespolka and Christian Skou Hansen from the marketing department of the Club both contacted Shawn Danhouser and Ross Sweeney about forming a local fan club so that our fellow Bees fans could get together to watch matches.
Megan and Christian have been instrumental in assisting not only the Chicago Bees but the other international Bee fan clubs out there.
They provided us with some great merchandise to hang up at the pubs, a Chicago Bee’s logo that we can use in our marketing, and infographics to help us promote our watch parties.
The club has been truly wonderful to work with.
We thank them for all their support.
Shawn has been a Bee since 2010 when he and fellow Chicago Bee, Dan Springman met up with local Bee fans Terry Latham, and Tom Baldassari (both Bees United members) and it was love at first site with the club and Griffin Park.
The pubs on all four corners may also have had something to do with it! Shawn came to the marketing’s team attention after he had been featured on the Premier League website the previous summer.
Ross had previously lived in London while his wife Christina was dancing with the Royal Ballet. When Ross moved to Brentford from Hammersmith, longtime Brentford supporter and Ross’s Manager Marcella Phelan encouraged him to support the Bees. By a most strange coincidence, Marcella, is now very much a Bee and part of our Community trust as a trustee, having spent over 16 years at Ealing Council (where Marcella was awarded an MBE) and more latterly, studied for san MBA at the University of West London – one of the BFC partners of course!)
Ross and Christina went to games at Griffin Park, watched at the Lord Nelson with their young daughter and fell in love with the Bees. When they returned home to the US they brought their love of the Bees with them and have passed it on to their children, and were ecstatic when we won promotion to the Premier League.
After emailing his friend with congrats after the Man Utd victory, Ross received a phone call from Marcella asked him to help start a fan club in Chicago and this was a request he could not refuse!
Shawn and Ross quickly became good friends and planned their first watch party for the Man City away match in November at the Ballydoyle Pub in Downers Grove
“We had a decent sized crowd considering that the match kicked off locally at 6:30 a.m. We had to wait until the 80th minute before we could legally have a pint.” Shawn recalls.
Since then, we have been trying to find the existing Bees in the Chicago area and recruit some neutrals to join our ranks. We try to have at least one watch party a month until we can better support for weekly meet ups. Our watch parties have had fans of all ages and a great time has been had by all, even the fans of that week’s opponent.
Our ultimate goal is to have simultaneous watch parties both in the City and in the suburbs to better accommodate all Bee fans. There are only a few dedicated football pubs in the City and they already serve as homes for many of the larger clubs fan bases. We are hoping to find a location that will be just for Bee fans, and willing to open early for matches given the six-hour time difference between London and Chicago. We are very excited about the future of the Chicago Bees.
Some of us are planning to watch the US based matches during the summer series tour and we are also discussing representing the Bees at one of the upcoming Premier League Fan Fest events.
We expect that we will also eventually be able to connect with other Brentford fan clubs as they continue to come online in other cities. It will be like going to an away match!
Who knows maybe we’ll even have a large group of Chicago Bees visit make the pilgrimage to the GTech one day? We are hopeful that the readers of this newsletter may know some Chicago area Bees and put them in touch with us so we can grow our ranks. We also want to offer some hospitality to those who happen to visiting from abroad and want to watch a match with their fellow Bees. Our social media links are below so please share with anyone who you think might be interested. You Bees!
Shawn Danhouser and Ross Sweeney run the Chicago Bees
WIth thanks to Shawn Danhouser