Poker Writer
Billionaire poker player Tony Bloom, who owns English soccer club Brighton & Hove Albion, is making another big wager by buying a 29% stake in Scottish club Heart of Midlothian (known popularly as Hearts).
The 55-year-old from London doesn’t play poker as often as he used to, but is widely seen as one of the shrewdest owners in international soccer. He took over the Brighton team in 2009 at a time when it had been bouncing back and forth between the second and third divisions. Since then, he has seen it rise to become a fixture of the English Premier League.
He also owns Belgian club Union Saint-Gilloise, which won the Belgian league this past season. UEFA rules limit Bloom’s maximum stake in Hearts and Union to avoid conflicts of interest if the teams play Brighton in international events.
Bloom is looking to repeat that success with Hearts, a club with a rich history in the Scottish League that has stagnated in recent years. The team finished third in the 2023-2024 Scottish Premiership, but ended up in the lower half of the league’s split format last season, battling to avoid relegation.
Bloom stated his goals for the club:
I am absolutely thrilled to be investing in Hearts. I firmly believe in the club’s ability to disrupt the pattern of domination of Scottish football which has been in place for far too long.
From Poker to Football
Bloom has a long history in poker, with most of his success having come before his ownership of Brighton in 2009. Several big individual results contributed to over $3.8 million in career tournament winnings. The largest of these was a $964,296 runner-up finish in the 2011 Aussie Millions Poker Championship.
In his poker heyday, he was known as “The Lizard” for his cold-blooded approach at the table and calculated play style. That level-headed, numbers-based approach has translated well to the club ownership realm, as he is known for making smart moves to improve his clubs. He’s credited as one of the main reasons Brighton has made its comeback to the Premier League.
Although Bloom has no need to rely on poker for income, those days are not entirely behind him. He won a PokerGO Tour tournament as recently as 2022 for $360,000.
It appears that Bloom views sports investments as a process akin to placing bets. He puts himself in a good position by speculating on currently less-prestigious clubs whose histories suggest considerable potential upside. By returning them to prominence, as he has done with Brighton and Union Saint-Gilloise, he benefits both the team and himself. He’ll be hoping to do the same with his new venture at Hearts.
Bloom’s Shadow Rival
Bloom’s success spawned a story remarkably similar to his own. Matthew Benham is the current owner of Brentford, a soccer club in London. It has made a rise on a trajectory very similar to Brighton’s, going from the third division to the top half of the English Premier League since Benham took over as owner in 2012.
Benham worked under Bloom in the early 2000s, but the two parted ways on reportedly bad terms in 2004. It’s said that they haven’t spoken since, and now have a rivalry of sorts. Benham set up a betting company called SmartOdds, which he parlayed into ownership of Brentford.
Another Bettor-to-Owner Story
Another poker player and bettor who has turned to soccer club ownership is Haralabos “Bob” Voulgaris. The Canadian has over $5.4 million in career poker winnings. Most of that comes from events before 2013, but he has enjoyed a recent resurgence, including a $1.6 million cash at a Triton Poker tour event in Monte Carlo in November 2024.
Voulgaris is a multi-vertical professional gambler, having found success in sports betting as well as poker. He’s also the former Director of Quantitative Research and Development for the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise.
Now, the 49-year-old Greek-Canadian is also following Bloom into soccer club ownership as the principal owner of third-division Spanish club CD Castellon. He made his entry in 2022, picking a club at a similar level to where Brighton was when Bloom took it over.
The man who hired Voulgaris to work for the Dallas Mavericks was Mark Cuban, one of the best-known sports team owners in the world.
Cuban has a history of advocating for the legalization of sports betting and has explored partnerships with casino organizations. He has been known to value the betting side in sports, as shown by his hiring of Voulgaris in 2018.
In some ways, investment in sports franchises is a logical extension of sports betting for the very wealthy. There’s a limit to how much action books are willing to take, especially on lower-league events. If a multi-millionaire or billionaire wants to bet big on such a team, buying it is the biggest bet of all.
