PREMIER League football has firmly put Bournemouth on an international platform.

This was the message from AFC Bournemouth’s commercial director Rob Mitchell during a seminar for education and business giants from the district.

According to Mr Mitchell, AFC Bournemouth is currently the third most watched Premier League team on NBC Television in America.

With other famous Premier League fans including Sylvester Stallone, who is apparently an Everton fan, Barack Obama, a West Ham supporter, and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt - Liverpool supporters - the Cherries could be well on their way to drawing their own famous American fans.

The International Education Forum’s Executive Business Network, which was formed last year to ensure Bournemouth and Poole is recognised as a world class centre of excellence for international education, hosted their first seminar this month.

The theme of the seminar was ‘marketing and maximising the Bournemouth brand through use of social media’.

During the seminar panel member Rob Mitchell talked about the new opportunities that Bournemouth has as a town with a team in the Premier League and how this has firmly put the Bournemouth name on an international platform.

He said: “Premier League football is a highly effective platform to entice visitors to Britain and football clubs are prominent symbols of their towns and cities.

"We are keen that we promote Bournemouth as having the best premier league beaches.

“Premier League football fans are very engaged on social media and our followers on Facebook, Twitter and You Tube have grown at quite a staggering rate.

"We recently opened an AFC Bournemouth account on the Chinese social media site, Weibo as we have so much interest and support in China.”

Other speakers included marketing specialist Adam Lewis of Bournemouth based Bright Blue Day design agency as well as Brendan Herbert and Robin Watson of Laceys Solicitors.

David Jones, vice chairman of the IEF and principal of ETC International College, said: “The seminar has been excellent and really thought provoking.

"It feels to me as though the whole area is surfing a wave of optimism at the moment, as embodied by the unprecedented commercial developments, the growth of Bournemouth as a media hub, AFC Bournemouth’s successes in the Premier League and the impressive growth of Bournemouth University and the Arts University.

"We look forward to using the additional knowledge that we have acquired today and ensuring that even more people want to come to Bournemouth to study English.”

Currently overseas students make a staggering £300m-a-year contribution to the local economy and the town welcomes more than 50,000 foreign students every year.

The IEF is a professional association made up of the international educational institutions in the area, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth Arts University, White House Guardianships and Bournemouth and Poole College.