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.
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.
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.
In his defence to the legal action, Bloom says Dudfield received a £60,000 “nuisance payment” to settle any claims he had against him in July 2023, having already “cashed out” his position in December 2022.
Bloom, the court document says, had no obligation under the agreement to pay Dudfield and was entitled to expect he look to Cottrell.
Bloom’s defence said: “The effect … 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.”
Dudfield says he is owed $17.5m (£13.1m).
The dispute has shone a light on the largely hidden operations and vast sums of money that power one of the world’s most successful betting operations.
Bloom is the majority shareholder and chair of the Premier League club Brighton and has made his fortune from gambling.
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’s accounts
In the 17-page response to Dudfield’s claims, Bloom says: “It 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’s name, described by Mr Cottrell as a ‘hedging account’ which he held with [the gambling platform] Sportsbet.io.”
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.
It alleges Bloom’s syndicate made millions of dollars from betting using accounts in the name of Cottrell; $3.7m in net winnings from August to December 2022.
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’s syndicate.
But Bloom’s 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.
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’s betting accounts.
Just one account belonging to Cottrell was used before Dudfield “cashed out”, according to Bloom’s 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.
The court document confirms that multiple apparent third parties were used by Bloom’s syndicate to place bets through “exotic accounts”. But there was no “standard practice” for how they operated and they were not referred to as “secret”, according to the defence.
Bloom does not admit the syndicate is “secretive”, but confirms it keeps “information barriers” between departments and those who place bets at Starlizard Consulting, which operates the syndicate, according to the document. It is “generally successful” but that it generates £600m a year – a claim made by Dudfield – is an “exaggeration”, the defence says.
Bloom’s defence does not address some of the allegations, including claims that footballers and businessmen were used as frontmen for the betting syndicate.
Bloom’s defence notes that in 2018, after Dudfield left employment at Starlizard Consulting Limited but before the agreement involving Cottrell, he was given £405,000 to settle a debt, which was set against his share of future winnings from the syndicate, which amounted only to £102,000.
Membership of the syndicate was a perk sometimes given to employees, though there are also non-employee members, according to the defence.
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.
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 “whales” are often deployed to place bets on their behalf. As someone known for high-stakes betting, Cottrell has the profile of a “whale”.
Still, Bloom did not require so-called “exotic accounts” that used other people’s identities, and much of his betting does not “involve the use of such accounts”, according to the court document.
Lawyers acting for Cottrell said when approached last year about Dudfield’s legal action: “Our client is not a party to those proceedings but considers it would be inappropriate for him to comment on them in the media.”
Dudfield and Bloom declined to comment on the ongoing legal proceedings.
