{"id":386525,"date":"2026-01-23T18:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T18:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/386525\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T18:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T18:19:08","slug":"billionaire-gambler-tony-bloom-denies-owing-millions-to-former-colleague-brighton-hove-albion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/386525\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire gambler Tony Bloom denies owing millions to former colleague | Brighton & Hove Albion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The billionaire owner of Brighton & Hove Albion football club has confirmed his syndicate placed millions of pounds worth of bets through the gambling accounts of the Reform UK adviser George Cottrell.<\/p>\n

The admission comes in a document filed to the high court by Tony Bloom, who also admits that he, Cottrell and a former employee, Ryan Dudfield, had an agreement under which winnings were due to be split between them.<\/p>\n

Bloom also claims that Dudfield, who is suing him and his syndicate, is not owed any further share of the millions made from this arrangement.<\/p>\n

In his defence to the legal action, Bloom says Dudfield received a \u00a360,000 \u201cnuisance payment\u201d to settle any claims he had against him in July 2023, having already \u201ccashed out\u201d his position in December 2022.<\/p>\n

Bloom, the court document says, had no obligation under the agreement to pay Dudfield and was entitled to expect he look to Cottrell.<\/p>\n

Bloom\u2019s defence said: \u201cThe effect \u2026 of the July 2023 agreement was to settle any and all claims that the claimant may have against Mr Bloom and, accordingly, covered the claims brought in these proceedings. The instant proceedings are also brought in breach of the covenant not to sue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dudfield says he is owed $17.5m (\u00a313.1m).<\/p>\n

The dispute has shone a light on the largely hidden operations and vast sums of money that power one of the world\u2019s most successful betting operations.<\/p>\n

Bloom is the majority shareholder and chair of the Premier League club Brighton and has made his fortune from gambling.<\/p>\n

Dudfield, a professional gambler who used to work for Bloom, introduced his former boss to Cottrell. He is pursuing a case against Bloom and his syndicate, claiming that he is owed potentially millions of pounds from an arrangement they reached in which bets were placed for Bloom through Cottrell\u2019s accounts<\/p>\n

In the 17-page response to Dudfield\u2019s claims, Bloom says: \u201cIt was an express term of the agreement that Mr Cottrell would allow Mr Bloom to place bets on a certain gambling account in Mr Cottrell\u2019s name, described by Mr Cottrell as a \u2018hedging account\u2019 which he held with [the gambling platform] Sportsbet.io.\u201d<\/p>\n

The syndicate was entitled to a 60% share, and Dudfield and Cottrell 40% between them. Dudfield and Cottrell were entitled to 7% and 33% respectively, the document says.<\/p>\n

It alleges Bloom\u2019s syndicate made millions of dollars from betting using accounts in the name of Cottrell<\/a>; $3.7m in net winnings from August to December 2022.<\/p>\n

In his claim filed last year, Dudfield alleges he thought the arrangement had ended at the end of 2022 because he believed Cottrell had ended his ties with Bloom\u2019s syndicate.<\/p>\n

But Bloom\u2019s defence says the syndicate continued to place bets through Cottrell up until October 2025, garnering another $2.4m in net winnings. It also claims Dudfield had no agreement for any fee or commission for business between him and Cottrell after 2022, and that if Dudfield is owed any money, it is for Cottrell to pay him.<\/p>\n

Another key point of contention between Dudfield and Bloom appears to be over whether or not the agreement with Dudfield, Cottrell and Bloom covered a wide range of Cottrell\u2019s betting accounts.<\/p>\n

Just one account belonging to Cottrell was used before Dudfield \u201ccashed out\u201d, according to Bloom\u2019s court document. Five others were used by Bloom only afterwards and he denies these include an alleged account at the online betting platform stake.com.<\/p>\n

The court document confirms that multiple apparent third parties were used by Bloom\u2019s syndicate to place bets through \u201cexotic accounts\u201d. But there was no \u201cstandard practice\u201d for how they operated and they were not referred to as \u201csecret\u201d, according to the defence.<\/p>\n

Bloom does not admit the syndicate is \u201csecretive\u201d, but confirms it keeps \u201cinformation barriers\u201d between departments and those who place bets at Starlizard Consulting, which operates the syndicate, according to the document. It is \u201cgenerally successful\u201d but that it generates \u00a3600m a year \u2013 a claim made by Dudfield \u2013 is an \u201cexaggeration\u201d, the defence says.<\/p>\n

Bloom\u2019s defence does not address some of the allegations, including claims that footballers and businessmen were used as frontmen for the betting syndicate.<\/p>\n

Bloom\u2019s defence notes that in 2018, after Dudfield left employment at Starlizard Consulting Limited but before the agreement involving Cottrell, he was given \u00a3405,000 to settle a debt, which was set against his share of future winnings from the syndicate, which amounted only to \u00a3102,000.<\/p>\n

Membership of the syndicate was a perk sometimes given to employees, though there are also non-employee members, according to the defence.<\/p>\n

Bloom agreed via Ian McAleavy, an employee at StarLizard, to enter into a new agreement with Dudfield in 2022, after he introduced him to Cottrell.<\/p>\n

High-profile, successful gamblers can find themselves effectively shut out of betting sites because of the scale and frequency of the bets they place. This means \u201cwhales\u201d are often deployed to place bets on their behalf. As someone known for high-stakes betting, Cottrell has the profile of a \u201cwhale\u201d.<\/p>\n

Still, Bloom did not require so-called \u201cexotic accounts\u201d that used other people\u2019s identities, and much of his betting does not \u201cinvolve the use of such accounts\u201d, according to the court document.<\/p>\n

Lawyers acting for Cottrell said when approached last year about Dudfield\u2019s legal action: \u201cOur client is not a party to those proceedings but considers it would be inappropriate for him to comment on them in the media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dudfield and Bloom declined to comment on the ongoing legal proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The billionaire owner of Brighton & Hove Albion football club has confirmed his syndicate placed millions of pounds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-386525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}