![]() Starlizard has 160 employees and they have to sign non-disclosure agreements when they join. Now technology products provide access to live streams and in-play statistics. Data used to be gathered first-hand once the season was up and running by sending people to matches. They are ahead of the game in knowing who will start a season well and who won’t because they have people at pre-season matches and training camps. The information covers everything from injuries, probable line-ups, overviews, mood and motivation in the camp to pitch conditions, travel arrangements and how many supporters will be at the match. The company has an army of analysts, statisticians, expert club informants and researchers providing dependable, in-depth team news and data before anyone else. But Starlizard soon became his golden gaming chip. He sold Premier Bet three years later to a gaming company for £1 million.īloom’s diverse portfolio included interests in private equity companies, start-up businesses, and commercial and residential properties in places such as Australia, South Africa and Panama. Recognising the potential of the Asian betting system, Bloom set up Premier Bet, his own online football betting firm, on the eve of the next World Cup in 2002 in South Korea and Japan. Give Norwich a two-goal advantage and the odds for both teams become more equitable.īloom had already established himself as a shrewd gambler by convincing Chandler’s management staff to bet their entire profit from the competition on France winning the 1998 World Cup final on home soil against Brazil. ![]() ![]() So, for example, Liverpool would be heavy favourites against Norwich in normal betting. The system gives goal advantages to smaller teams over bigger teams to make odds more attractive. He was headhunted by bookmakers Victor Chandler in 1997 after four years as a professional gambler, having worked previously for accountancy firm Ernst & Young for two-and-a-half years.īloom spent seven months working for Chandler’s in Bangkok, Thailand, and three years in Gibraltar, specialising in Asian handicap football betting. ![]() The company is particularly big in Asia, where Bloom latched on to a niche and highly profitable market earlier in his entrepreneurial career. Starlizard uses sophisticated data and information models to predict the outcomes of sporting events. Millions of pounds are staked by rich people worldwide on each Premier League game. “I looked around and just said, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and we will come back from this and do it next season.’”Įleven months later, Bloom was jumping for joy in the directors’ box at the £93 million Amex Stadium he helped to fund, twirling a blue and white scarf above his head, as Brighton beat Wigan Athletic to clinch the club’s return to the top flight of English football after a 34-year absence.īloom, as head of a US sports betting syndicate, is also the biggest client. “I went into the changing room at the end of the Sheffield Wednesday game and the players were on the floor, I was on the floor,” said Bloom. In 2015-16, Brighton were pipped to automatic promotion to the top flight by Middlesbrough on goal difference, then beaten in the Championship play-offs by Sheffield Wednesday. The emotional investment has arguably been even greater. He has invested more than £360 million of a personal fortune made from his online sports betting empire to turn Brighton into a Premier League club, playing in a smart 30,000-seater stadium with one of the top training facilities in the country. They were League One strugglers playing at Withdean, a converted athletics track, when he became the owner. He has supported Brighton since childhood and has transformed the club after taking control 11 years ago. He could have been anybody preparing to sit in the stands.”īloom is 50 today. He arrived wearing an overcoat, a shoulder bag and a pulled down Brighton hat. “He was coming to Withdean on the train from north London. “I had been used to working for multi-millionaires and meeting multi-millionaires, billionaires even,” the club’s former managing director tells The Athletic, “but my first impression of him was he was different. Ken Brown is talking about the first time he met Tony Bloom, the Brighton & Hove Albion chairman and world leader in sports betting.
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