Brentford FC Coach Thomas Frank’s Gambling Blindspot

When Brentford FC manager Thomas Frank finally broke his silence about the potential for star striker Ivan Toney to be hit with a lengthy ban he didn’t hold back.

Toney pleaded guilty to 232 alleged breaches of rules related to gambling earlier this month and there is speculation the Football Association will deliver a severe punishment.

Anti-gambling charities have highlighted the irony in Toney being reprimanded for indulging in a pastime soccer actively promotes.

“If you force young people to endorse addictive products, don’t be surprised if they use them,” one organization, The Big Step, tweeted alongside a picture of Toney wearing different shirts emblazoned with gambling logos and player of the month trophies sponsored by betting firms.

Amongst the images was a photo of Toney in the current Brentford FC home shirt which carries the ‘Hollywood Bets’ logo.

And, when handling the topic of Toney’s ban, it was this contradiction which Frank also focused on in an interview with the Daily Mail last week.

“When Ivan runs out with the name of our sponsor on his shirt, it sends mixed signals to everyone that football allows betting companies,” he told the paper’s Oliver Holt, “there should be some rules from the Government to prevent that. There is better gambling awareness now and safe gambling but there is much to be done.”

Frank wasn’t done there. He went a step further and suggested he would be willing to take an ethical stance even it if compromised the team’s performance.

“Perhaps if I reflect on what would be a perfect world, would I rather have less money and not have betting on the front of our shirts even if it means we don’t have as good players? Maybe,” he continued, “it is ultimately about results and money and you can never be perfect but you have to have the intention to have the right values and do the right thing.”

Such a statement is pretty remarkable in its own right, but when you analyze the factors behind Brentford FC’s rise through the divisions it becomes shockingly bold.

Brentford FC’s success and betting

There is a strong argument that if it wasn’t for gambling then Brentford would almost certainly not be in the Premier League and Ivan Toney is unlikely to be playing for them.

As I have documented previously the club’s rise from the fourth tier of English soccer to the fringes of European qualification owes itself to the incredible ownership of lifelong fan Matthew Benham.

A talented mathematician who began his career as a derivatives trader, Benham earned significant sums by applying a statistical model to soccer betting which predicted the results more accurately than the bookmakers. He did this whilst employed by Brighton owner Tony Bloom’s company Premier Bet but broke away to set up his firm, Smartodds, which sells statistics and tips to professional gamblers.

It was with the money earned from this venture Benham was able to buy Brentford in 2012.

But this was not the case of a wealthy man indulging himself with an asset he remembered fondly from childhood.

When Benham swept into the halls of the quaint but decaying Griffin Park stadium he set about creating an operation that could outsmart the competition.

Harnessing the statistical research and sports modeling pioneered by his gambling firms, Benham created an operation that sustainably grew in the long term.

By being able to identify and develop talent better than clubs with resources that well outstripped the Bees, Brentford steadily rose through the divisions.

The genius of the strategy is that it maximizes the benefits of player trading. The club never fears the departure of a star who catches the eye of a wealthier organization, it sells for a substantial profit and buys in an even better pool of talent.

Toney himself is an example of this strategy, a relatively unknown striker bought from Peterborough United he replaced one of Brentford’s most exciting forwards in years Ollie Watkins in the summer of 2021 and helped do what his predecessor couldn’t; deliver Premier League soccer.

Brentford’s ascent through this smarter way of doing things deserves praise. But the tight links to gambling and the money it earns should not be glossed over or ignored.

The moral maze

What Frank’s comments highlight is how soccer is having to grapple with a new reality where ethical questions are a part of the landscape players and managers navigate.

As I pointed out a couple of weeks back, soccer is no longer just a place that reflects political and moral questions, it is the arena these debates take place.

In his Daily Mail interview, Frank offered a different ethical analysis of Toney’s potential punishment by comparing his offenses and punishment to action taken about the racist abuse the forward receives.

“It looks as if Ivan is going to get punished for this but that he has to put up with racist abuse every day,” he continued, “I understand that they are two separate things and that being racially abused is not mitigation for gambling but it still feels like a confused message. It is hard when it feels as if Ivan is going to be punished more severely for what he is alleged to have done than people who are abusing him.

“I am not talking about serious crimes here, obviously, but what do you do when people step over the line in society for more minor misdemeanours? You get them some education or you get a suspended sentence.”

Frank described the possibility of banning Toney for “six months” as the soccer equivalent of “putting him in prison” and claimed this was unfair because the level of education around gambling was not at the same standard as the information about racism.

“The level of education that we get — all of us — around the gambling rules is not the same as the education that is given about racial abuse.

“Ivan was in hotels, he was on loan, he had nine different clubs in eight years before arriving at Brentford, he is a young man and he has all this influence going on around him from gambling and yet we will not pay any attention to that, we will just look at the offense itself.

“It is hard for players when the advertising for betting companies is all around them at stadiums and on our shirts and the shirts of other clubs and we are saying ‘ignore the advertising.’”

Frank might be right, but he also needs to educate himself on the depths to which gambling and the beautiful game are intertwined.