The story of Matthew Benham is a wild one, so buckle up. The professional sports bettor managed to turn $700,000 into $300 million, but it didn’t happen overnight. Benham used his experience in finance and working with, and founding, sports betting outlets to not only save his favorite football club, but increase its value exponentially.
It all began when Benham graduated from the University of Oxford and entered the finance world, eventually being named a vice president at Bank of America. But in 2001, he made the decision to leave finance and enter the world of sports betting.
Benham joined sports gambling company Premier Bet, where he assisted in developing predictive gambling models based on analytics. All under the tutelage of Tony Bloom, one of the world’s most successful gamblers. However, Benham and Bloom had a falling out and Benham left Premier Bet in 2003 after two years.
From there, Benham, now a professional sports gambler, used his knowledge and experience of the past two years, as well as the millions he won from sports betting, to found his own betting syndicate, Smartodds.
Smartodds was a huge success and Benham also owned sports betting exchange Matchbook, so here’s where things really got rolling.
Benham then started to focus on his other passion, Brentford FC. He’s a lifelong fan of the West London football club and when he realized the team was struggling financially in 2007, Benham stepped in with an interesting offer: a $700,000 loan to the fans to buy the team.
But there was a catch. If the fans chose to not pay back the loan, Benham would have the option to buy the club. And, sure enough, in 2012, the fans chose not to buy the club and Benham became the owner.
In his new position at the helm, Benham used his analytics background to improve the team from the ground up. He spent $10 million on FC Midtjylland, a small football club in Denmark, to test out his analytical approach to improving a football club. He sent the ideas that worked out up to Brentford and started scouting more undervalued prospects rather than signing huge stars to the team. Brentford believed in giving a player 35 games before determining his value and took the time and patience other teams weren’t implementing to give young players a chance.
Because of this, the club was able to develop talent and sell them for a profit. And the club’s worth was slowly growing as well. The team won the Championship Play-Off Final last weekend and has risen from the fourth tier of English football to the Premier League.
The team is also now worth $300 million. At least.
And the longer the team remains in the Premier League, the more its worth will increase. The lesson here, kids, from this sports gambler’s story is patience with your investments pays off. Be wise with your winnings and then if the opportunity to save your favorite childhood team from bankruptcy presents itself, you’ll be ready.
Lucy is a sports betting content producer with Audacy and BetQL. She has worked with WEEI and Audacy as a writer, radio producer and podcaster. Lucy lives in Boston and loves Tom Brady and prop bets. Follow Lucy on Twitter at @LucilleBurdge.