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The man that turned 700k into 300 million dollars in the sports industry

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#finance #financialtips #financing #goals
Published
02/11/2022

1989 was the year that Matthew Benham, born in England, graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Physics. But the path he followed next was in the financial sector, working in an industry that led him to become the VP of Bank of America.

After 12 years of career in finances, he decided to switch industries and venture into the world of online gambling. This turned to be a very profitable activity in the United Kingdom as many companies thrive by offering online platforms with the best casinos in the UK to a growing number of clients that look for the best entertainment online on sites that are safe and licensed by the UK Gambling Commission. One of the main components of the success of this industry was the security offered to players thanks to the activity being regulated by governmental instances.

But in 2001, the industry was still in an early phase. Matthew Benham’s work consisted particularly in developing predictive models for sports gambling. Applications of data analytics were a big part of his job, something he brought from the finance sector. Besides this, he was also a poker apprentice of Tony Bloom, a legend in the gambling industry.

The success was immediate, and after only 2 years, Benham was already making millions of dollars. In 2004 he decided to become an entrepreneur and opened his own gambling company. He offered the same services to his clients, other gambling sites interested in algorithm strategies and statistics applied to the sports betting industry.

And this is the part where his passion and love for his childhood football club makes an entrance into this story.

Benham’s success in the sports betting industry wasn’t a coincidence. He was an avid sports fan since a child and particularly, a long-time supporting fan of Brentford Football Club.

Brentford was a lower league football club, spending most of its history between the fourth and third tier in the English football pyramid. And in 2007, they were in a deep institutional crisis that made them declare bankruptcy and be on the brink of disappearing.

An association of fans got together to try and save the club, and Matthew Benham decided to give a loan of 700 thousand dollars so the fan association could save the club. One of the clauses of the loan included an option for Benham to buy Brentford should the fan association decide not to repay the loan.

And this is exactly what happened in 2012.

Matthew Benham became the sole owner of his childhood club, and rather than this being a multimillionaire impulse that looks to indulge his every whim or an investment set to get an immediate profit, Benham wanted to change the course of Brentford’s history.

In order to achieve this, he applied the same strategies and the same “numbers-based” philosophy that brought him so much success in his entrepreneurial career. He directed his club thru an exhaustive use of data analytics in the same manner as in the movie “Moneyball”.

Benham hired a team of data analytics engineers and they started to produce algorithms and performance indicators that were far from the popular statistics in football such as passes, goals, wins, or losses. Brentford started to develop new metrics that signaled the progress of the team according to different factors and this allowed them to scout undervalued players that they later sold at ten times their original value.

The results weren’t immediate, but rather steady and the team started to kickoff and win promotions until 2021 where they won the second division playoff to finally reach the Premier League, England’s first division. A division they hadn’t met since 1947.

The Premier League is football’s most profitable league, with total broadcasting rights being sold to TV for more than a billion dollars worldwide.

So, this means that taking part in this league returns a profitable share for every team involved. Only for participating in the 2021-2022 season, Brentford is guaranteed of receiving around 300 million dollars. And should they remain for another season in the Premier League, they could be registering an income of more than 400 million dollars.

All thanks to the revolution caused by Matthew Benham in the club, saving them from bankruptcy and introducing a business model that’s now being copied all around the world.

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