Prospective Hearts messiah knows all about Scottish football through army of informants
Brighton owner Tony Bloom is ready to make Hearts a major force in Scottish game, armed with data gathered from every club as he stayed a step ahead of the bookies.
The gambling 'genius' who aims to disrupt the supremacy of the Old Firm has employed an 'army of ants' that make him an authority on Hearts – and every other Scottish team.
Brighton owner Tony Bloom's bid to buy a 29 per cent share of the Jam Tarts for almost £10million comes after his Starlizard betting consultancy built up a database detailing every shred of hard fact – and gossip – on Scottish football.
The Daily Record can reveal the incredible attention to detail that saw Bloom harvest details on footballers whose wives had babies or who'd fallen out with their strike partner at training.
The man who hopes to dismantle the Celtic and Rangers stranglehold on the Scottish game secretly gathered details on who might have suffered from a cold or what team might have drunk a few too many beers on the nights before a match.
And he has made a fortune by getting an edge on the bookies before wading in with massive bets using his detailed info on every club –garnered from super-fans, club insiders and local journalists. Data genius Bloom, an ace mathematician, has crunched footie match statistics like never before.
But the Starlizard gambling consultancy he set up has dug deeper, reaching the details that players' managers might never find out about. He has paid cash retainers to scores of sources in Scotland, England and other football nations, covering every senior club from the SPFL down to the League Two.
His paid informers could include anyone from local superfans and journalists, whose sources could include coaches, kit men and medics, who might be oblivious to the fact their chit-chat is being logged and analysed.
One of the Scottish 'ants' said Bloom used different layers of information, with annual retainers paid to trusted sources. The source said: 'Starlizard is interested in what players had for breakfast, if that data is available – but they want to go a lot deeper than that.
'They literally want to know who's been feeling depressed, who's not been sleeping, who's put on weight and who's not been training well. That data would work very well for Celtic or Rangers – or Hearts.
'But it can be gold dust when you're weighing up a match between East Stirling and Dumbarton, for example, where the squad is small and the newspapers aren't covering them the same way as they do the big teams. It was hard to understand at the outset why they would pay for information in such matches – but in the long run it wasn't about the size of the match, it was about the odds offered by bookies.'
The source – who is keeping under wraps which team he was tuned into – said the Starlizard engagement started around 20 years ago.
He said: 'It was all above board but very hush-hush. Back then, Starlizard was paying at least £1000 on an annual retainer for information from Scottish professional teams – and you'd get a bonus if the information was seen as significant and led to a big win.
'My contact gave me a template to fill in every week that included team details, how their last match went and whether or not the result went the way it should have done. But he made clear that it was 'other stuff' was really prized. He wanted to know if any player had been up for three nights with a new-born baby.
'He wanted to hear if players had been out wetting that baby's head on the Thursday night. He wanted to know if they were complaining about a hangover the next day. Essentially he wanted the club gossip – but it had to be based on reality, stuff that would have the possibility of affecting a match outcome.'
Data gathered could also include expected crowd numbers, distance of travel, injuries and pitch conditions. Bloom is known as The Lizard at the poker table – where he's won millions – because he is so cold-blooded and unafraid to lose, such is his trust in probability theory.
He can't control luck or freak results – but he believes that he will always win in the long run if his calculations are correct. Where he believes the bookies have offered the 'wrong price', at overly generous odds, he has seen a way in his poker and his racing and football gambling to make money. That is where his research comes into play.
Starlizard employees are mainly young adults with little gambling industry experience, who must undertake not to use information to gamble themselves. The source said Bloom's army of informants would be assured that their information would never be used against the clubs they were revealing secret data on. He said: 'There was never any suggestion of any match fixing or using underhand methods.
'The information would never be published and no one would be the wiser if stuff about their private life was passed on. It all just got rolled up in a massive betting strategy, along with data from all over the world.'
Starlizard executives have stressed that their data is a major weapon against match fixing in football – as they track suspicious betting patterns, that can be mapped on to unusual mistakes made by players in games. Data supplied by the army of ants would be given to number crunchers at Starlizard's HQ – who would make a decision of which games would be worth a bet and how the stake might be weighted.
The source said: 'The Starlizard model was based on one massive network of people, all focused on beating the bookies with data – and giving gambling advice to rich clients.
'The beauty in that is that Tony Bloom would make money even if he lost. His success would be judged over a series of bets or a season.'
Bloom, 55, is beloved among the Brighton fans because he is a fan himself and even travels by train to away games alongside Seagulls supporters.
He has transformed the club after taking control in 2009, applying a data driven transfer strategy that has been the envy of the world – identifying players with promise and projecting future values that will make money for the club within a few years.
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Bloom invested more than £360million of a personal fortune made from his online sports betting empire to turn Brighton into a Premier League club, with a future-proofed 30,000 stadium. Starlizard was set up in London in 2006.
Bloom, as head of a US sports betting syndicate, also set himself up as the biggest client. Millions of pounds are staked by rich people worldwide – mainly in Asia – on matches where Starlizard reckons it can see an edge.
Bloom has also lived the high life as a top racehorse owner, winning massive races on the flat – and bagging a 100/1 winner at the Cheltenham Festival in March, with Poniros in the Triumph Hurdle.
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