Bloom’s gamble pays off
TONY BLOOM is a gambler by trade – he takes chances, tackles the odds, goes for broke. But not, he insists, with his beloved Brighton.
The man once rated one of the top 15 poker players in the world will not take many risks with the club he owns.
Having said that, Brighton have in the past week smashed their club transfer record twice.
They spent £10million signing PSV Eindhoven midfielder Davy Propper, then forked out £16m on Colombian winger Jose Izquierdo from Bruges.
But you have to speculate to accumulate – and those fees are peanuts compared with what Manchester City and Chelsea are spending.
Gambling is in Bloom’s blood.
On that infamous day when Brighton saved themselves from dropping out of the Football League in May 1997 with a desperate draw at Hereford, Bloom was in Las Vegas at a poker tournament.
But he was hanging on the phone, listening to every word.
The 47-year-old, known as ‘The Lizard’ around the poker tables of the world, does not come across as remotely reptilian.
Rather, Bloom, whose Starlizard betting company can rake in £100m a year, is excited at the prospect of facing the mighty Manchester City this evening as Brighton make their debut in the Premier League.
Bloom is adamant Brighton, who have been in enough scrapes over the past 25 years – they have been homeless and pretty much penniless for 14 of those – can stay up with the big boys.
He said: “As the owner of a football club, it’s very easy to spend money. For years we were making losses.
“But the dream when we built the Amex Stadium and the training ground was to be in the Premier League. I wouldn’t have gone ahead with either if I didn’t think it was a possibility. The goal now is to be here for many seasons.”
Bloom is Brighton to the core. His grandfather Harry was vice-chairman in the Seventies and his uncle Ray a director.
He can still remember his first game, at the old Goldstone. “It was against Blackpool with their tangerine shirts,” he said.
“I can’t remember the score. I went with my dad and brother. But my granddad went to every game, and I often used to sit in the directors’ box.”
The gambling bug hit Bloom early and he remembers spending his pocket money playing the fruit machines down on Queens Road.
After becoming a professional gambler, he used some of those winnings to buy Brighton in 2009, and has since ploughed £250m into the club.
When the Goldstone was sold in 1997, Albion spent two desperate years at Gillingham – a 150-mile round trip for the fans – then a dozen at the Withdean Stadium, an athletics track, before they finally found a home of their own again. Few clubs have had it harder.
Bloom said: “People below 30 have never seen Brighton as a top division club. We did well for the three seasons we survived there, getting to the FA Cup final. But until the late Nineties it was all downhill.”
That nerve-stretching day in 1997 he got his grandparents to hold the phone next to the radio to get the updates from Hereford’s Edgar Street ground as Bloom listened in between poker games.
He was at a heaving Withdean in 2008 when then-League One Brighton turfed Premier League Manchester City – who had just been taken over by the Abu Dhabi group – out of the League Cup on penalties. “Those memories stay with you. We had just beaten the richest club in the world,” he said.
Brighton lost out in the playoffs in 2016 but bounced back last season as Chris Hughton’s side clinched automatic promotion by mid-April.
Bloom said: “We made the conscious decision within a day or two of the play-off defeat. We gave Chris a new contract, kept all our best players and got going straight away.”
His biggest-ever punt? “When I invested in Albion. All the money I put in prior to getting planning permission for the new ground was pretty much worthless if we didn’t get it.”
But they did. And a dozen years on, Bloom and his gang are here.