Falmer Finance - £20million from one individual

[Tricky Dicky]

While I dislike rumours, this one is the first credibly sounding theory that reconciles what happened to the Wilkins out/Adams In happenings of last week. Nothing else has made sense to me about that so far.

Micky spends a bit this summer, get us up, then we spend (quite) a bit more to get to the Land of the Giants that is the Prem.

 

[SurreySeagulls]

And they all lived happily ever after

The End

 

[Tricky Dicky]

And they all lived happily ever after

The End

I'm just going to book my hotel for our Champions League final in 2011, which I think is being held in Bognor that year.

 

[Knotty]

And they all lived happily ever after

The End

We won't live happily ever after because, judging by a lot of comments on NSC, we hate the Premiership and all that money.

 

[steward 433]

We won't live happily ever after because, judging by a lot of comments on NSC, we hate the Premiership and all that money.

I don't hate the premiership, Just the top 4 teams.

 

[Knotty]

I don't hate the premiership, Just the top 4 teams.

What if we became one of the top 4?

 

[Djmiles]

What if we became one of the top 4?

Then that would be OK

 

[steward 433]

Then that would be OK

Yes it would as long as we build the club up the footballing way!!

The top 4 are only sucessful due to huge amounts of money being thrown at them

As much as i fuckin despise dirty leeds they were the last club to win the premiership who didn't buy it.

I want us to win our way up and not buy it

 

[Napper]

Yes it would as long as we build the club up the footballing way!!

The top 4 are only sucessful due to huge amounts of money being thrown at them

As much as i fuckin despise dirty leeds they were the last club to win the premiership who didn't buy it.

I want us to win our way up and not buy it

I'd take the buying it option. Following the Albion in Europe would be the best thing ever regardless of how we got there

 

[maffew]

The top 4 are only sucessful due to huge amounts of money being thrown at them

thats only really true of Chelsea though isnt it?

 

[steward 433]

I'd take the buying it option. Following the Albion in Europe would be the best thing ever regardless of how we got there

Would be great agreed but would rather win our way there. If we had to buy it then i would hope we could find locals and not some russian or american

 

[steward 433]

thats only really true of Chelsea though isnt it?

not really all the top 4 over the last ten years have thrown over a billion at the club

 

[Southover Street Seagull]

The Tony Bloom in question is this guy below. Yes, he did and still does make an incredible amount of money as a pro-gambler (so it likes like we have a toss up between someone who has made millions from porn and someone who has made millions gambling) and yes he is also a poker player (describing it as a bit of fun which is quite good if you can make a couple of million dollars doing so).

He is the guy in the Times Rich List and according to that has assets of over £100 million. Could he be the man with £20 million to spare? Yes.




Tony Bloom
A hugely successful pro gambler turned bookie, Tony Bloom is turning the UK into a nation of Asian handicap punters
By James Eastham


Look back through history and you'll see a minority of small men who have bestridden the world of sport like giants. In the 1990s, Prince Naseem Hamed briefly flourished as, pound-for-pound, the most entertaining boxer in the world. In the 1980s, Diego Maradona delighted football fans and sellers of hard drugs in equal amounts, and became one of the most recognizable faces on the planet. In the 1950s and 60s, Willy 'The Shoe' Shoemaker rode a record 8,833 winners despite a stature of 4ft 11in which, even by jockey's standards, was titchy.

When Tony Bloom bustles into an Italian caf? on Piccadilly, it strikes me I may be witnessing the entrance of the first small man who will rule the world of sports betting. Bloom, chief executive and founder of premierbet.com, stands no more than five and a half feet tall - but there is no disguising the size of his ambition.

Once a professional gambler, nowadays a big hitter who has switched sides, he is an increasingly well-known name in the sports betting industry and an internationally renowned poker player (with the Australasian Championship trophy already tucked away in the cabinet for 2004). Bloom is what you might call a one-man gambling success story. Since launching Premierbet on the eve of the football World Cup finals in May 2002, his stock has kept rising.

'I've been a football fan and a gambler since the age of about seven or eight,' he tells InsideEdge. 'My interest in both developed at the same time. As a young boy my introduction to gambling was fruit machines, and obviously I didn't have much money to gamble then, though I did lose pocket money now and again. But that just fired my interest.

'When the time came to make a living, I became a professional gambler. I have to say, it wasn't always easy. It can be tough when you're young; you're relying on gambling for your income and it's all quite new to you.

'For sure there were times, particularly in the early days, when I had some bad runs and lost a decent part of my capital. In those days my money management wasn't quite what it is today, but again, that's a lot to do with experience.' But Bloom wasn't that bad. In fact, he was so good that he made a decent living from it, beating the bookies by betting on all sports, particularly football, using his knowledge, research and contacts.

Victor Chandler eventually gave him a call. 'He asked me if I wanted to move out to Bangkok and start working for him on the Asian handicap markets.'

Did you have an account with him at that point? 'Yes,' he smiles, 'and yes, I did beat him.

'I agreed to give it a go. The way I saw it, I had nothing to lose. It was an opportunity to look at the betting industry from the other side. If things worked out, I thought it would be great. If not, I would have come straight back. I was working abroad for the first time in my life and it was a real eye-opener. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.'

Bloom is perhaps the ultimate gambling example of poacher-turned-gamekeeper. Having beaten the bookies for years, he jumped the fence, helped boost Victor Chandler's football division and enhanced his own reputation as a serious player in the process. But, given that he is a man who has spent his life backing his judgement, it was no surprise when Bloom decided it was time to work for himself again. Two years ago he launched Premierbet. He hasn't looked back since.

'Working for a big company can limit you a bit, and I knew what I wanted to do,' Bloom says. 'I had a good feeling I knew what punters wanted and I wanted to put it into practice.

'The idea behind Premierbet was to concentrate solely on football, covering numerous different leagues and different events. There was a football boom going on when we launched Premierbet and the internet boom is still going on, so more and more people are going to be gambling online.'

Another innovation - and arguably Bloom's biggest gamble of all - was to specialise in Asian handicap betting. Asian handicap's name derives from its popularity in the Far East. It's a type of betting that involves adding a handicap to even up the chances, while the draw is removed. In other words, the favourites have to overcome a goals deficit, while the other team has a head start. For example, if Arsenal were playing Leicester City, the prices may be quoted as Arsenal - 1.5, Leicester City +1.5 - Arsenal have to overcome a 1.5-goal disadvantage for a punter to win money on them.

So far, it looks like Bloom's made another good call. Premierbet has 12,000 registered users and more than half of their regulars bet using Asian handicaps. Bloom believes the style will become increasingly popular over the next few years.

'When we started, hardly anyone in the UK knew about Asian handicap,' he muses, 'but we're taking it more into the mainstream. It's not as complicated as punters think. I'm from a punting background, and I certainly believe it gives the punter a much better chance of winning.

'When people realise Asian handicap is the best form of football betting, it will become a lot more popular. In Asia, that's all they bet on. Taxi drivers, window cleaners, shopkeepers - they all bet on Asian handicaps. I'm not saying fixed odds will go, absolutely not. But it's all about education and confidence and the more people learn about Asian handicap, the more they will use it.'

These days, with so much of his time devoted to betting, Bloom gets little time to enjoy football as a normal fan. He admits: 'Football supporters usually either follow a team or watch a game on television looking for entertainment. Both those sets of people aren't going to be watching the game in the same way I, or other gamblers, are going to, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. There are always betting positions on, there are always teams I favour.

Part-time poker player, full-time winner
'I was away in South America earlier this year and watched some games out there without any betting interest at all. Yes, it was enjoyable as well - it's good to get a different perspective occasionally - but it doesn't happen often.'

For fun, he focuses instead on his other major passion - poker. In his spare time, Bloom is one of the UK's leading players. Known on the poker circuit as 'The Lizard', he plays seriously and clinched a major victory in January when he won the 2004 Australasian Poker Championship in Melbourne, collecting a first prize of £180,000.

'The Melbourne win was definitely my biggest and most rewarding,' he says. 'Poker for me is just a pastime but when I play, I play seriously. In the last six months I've hardly had time to play more than a handful of tournaments. It means I lack a certain sharpness, but you can get that back quite quickly. I come into tournaments fresh; I come in invigorated, full of enthusiasm.

'Obviously the professionals who are playing all the time, they know the players, they see more situations and they have that edge over me. But I wouldn't like to be playing every day, it becomes a grind. The freshness and the fact I'm not playing all the time gives me an edge as well.'

Does poker help with football betting, and vice versa? 'Not really. The only major similarity is that you're gambling money and taking risks. I wouldn't say the skills sets help each other - most of the top poker players I play with are not good sports betters, and most of the sports betters I know don't really play poker.

'For me, one is a hobby, the other is work. Poker is a hobby, and winning a big tournament like I did in Australia is a big thrill. Everything to do with Premierbet and football betting is a job. The more you do something, the more it becomes a job and the less you get a buzz out of it. So my buzz comes from poker, but if I played it professionally and gambled occasionally on football, it would be the other way round.'

Bloom is certainly showing no signs of losing the buzz at the moment. He is off to Las Vegas in April and May to play at the World Series Of Poker - 'I wouldn't say I'll win but I'm always confident about my chances' - and business at premierbet.com is, well, blooming. No wonder he is upbeat about the future.

'It is a great time to be involved in gambling. When I was younger, I found gambling tough at times, but these days, nothing fazes me, nothing bothers me. If Premierbet has a bad day, or if I lose a lot of money with my own bets, it's no problem at all.

'In this game, the difference between the winners and the losers is how one reacts in the face of adversity. Tomorrow is another day, with more action and more football. To be successful, you have to be mentally tough and be able to take the bad with the good.'

For Tony Bloom right now, there's no doubt about it - the good outweighs the bad.

You are wrong I think, if you read the Times Rich List entry it is not the same Tony Bloom.

RESULTS FOR 2008
Ranking: 784=
Worth: £100m
Source of wealth: Food

Premier Foods grew from a family company into one of South Africa’s largest businesses under Bloom’s stewardship. A 52% stake was sold by Associated British Foods in 1983 for about £198m, valuing the family’s share at nearly £100m. Bloom, 69, moved to London and is an astute investor in media and technology.

 

[Knotty]

Yes it would as long as we build the club up the footballing way!!

The top 4 are only sucessful due to huge amounts of money being thrown at them

As much as i fuckin despise dirty leeds they were the last club to win the premiership who didn't buy it.

I want us to win our way up and not buy it

I can only agree with you to a certain extent. Man U in the 90s built their success on a nucleus of home-grown youngsters who, fortunately for the club, came good at the same time. That success brought in the money to buy big and compete at the highest level. Should they have declined that opportunity?

If we were in that position of getting into the top flight with home-grown and 'cheap' players, should we not buy to keep ourselves competitive and try to reach the top?

Don't you think that all the clubs in the Premiership would love to be called one of the top four?

 

[Mtoto]

Poker is only a pastime for Tony Bloom these days. He makes his money from betting on football, using the same sort of deliberate (ie computer-based) method that a chap called Alan Woods used to use for racing in the Far East. If he's not quite the biggest football punter in the world, he'd certainly be top 10.

 

[steward 433]

I can only agree with you to a certain extent. Man U in the 90s built their success on a nucleus of home-grown youngsters who, fortunately for the club, came good at the same time. That success brought in the money to buy big and compete at the highest level. Should they have declined that opportunity?

If we were in that position of getting into the top flight with home-grown and 'cheap' players, should we not buy to keep ourselves competitive and try to reach the top?

Don't you think that all the clubs in the Premiership would love to be called one of the top four?

We will be in the premiership within 5 seasons but i just hope we can last up there as it will take a lot of money and i really do want to see this club up there again as i was 10 last time we played top flight football

 

[maffew]

not really all the top 4 over the last ten years have thrown over a billion at the club

are you sure?

I know Chelsea have spent about twice as much as their closest spenders, Man U, though isnt it "only" about 180m over 5 seasons?

Arsenal have got money though choose not to spend it, fair play. United have thrown a fair amount at the team but sold well also and brought up a good chunk of the core of the squad through the ranks for the last 15 years. They have made their own success to an extent.

And Liverpool cant be accussed of buying the title when they havent won it for nearly 20 years

 

[steward 433]

are you sure?

I know Chelsea have spent about twice as much as their closest spenders, Man U, though isnt it "only" about 180m over 5 seasons?

that's just transfer fess look at the wages also

Arsenal have got money though choose not to spend it, fair play.new ground ?? United have thrown a fair amount at the team but sold well also and brought up a good chunk of the core of the squad through the ranks for the last 15 years. They have made their own success to an extent.
Manure lowest spending team of the top 4 with most money coming back in.
And Liverpool cant be accussed of buying the title when they havent won it for nearly 20 years

Liverpool spent big but have never had the sucess either? maybe just bad management

 

[maffew]

Liverpool spent big but have never had the sucess either? maybe just bad management

Its a totally different league though. You can say "they've thrown a billion at the club" though except for Chelsea they run at a profit. They are just successful and people dont seem to like that

 

[Uncle Buck]

The fact is with Ray Bloom's past history with this club, do we really want any member of the Bloom family having anything near overall control of this club?