Matthew Benham

Matthew Alexander Benham (born May 1968) is a British businessman who is the owner of English Premier League club Brentford. He is also the founder and owner of Smartodds, a statistical research company for professional gamblers, and owner of Matchbook betting exchange. A longtime fan of Brentford, Benham attended his first match in 1979 at the age of eleven.

Career

Banking and finance In the 1990s, Benham worked for twelve years in the financial sector in the City of London, with stints as a hedge fund manager, and as a vice president at the Bank of America. Benham made a significant sum of money in the Asian betting market, using a statistical model developed by Stuart Coles and Mark Dixon at Lancaster University, which was able to predict the probabilities of football scores more accurately than the bookies. Based in Kentish Town in London, Smartodds focuses on statistical research and sports modelling, In 2011, he was part of a group of investors called Triplebet Limited, who became owners of sports betting exchange Matchbook. He initially participated as an anonymous "mystery investor". In 2009, Benham agreed to invest an additional £1 million a year for five years, in return for preference shares in the club. Bees United would then have the option to repay the loans to Benham and buy back his shares, while Benham held the option to take over the club as a majority owner. Ten days after becoming the club's new owner, Benham purchased a parcel of land near Kew Bridge railway station, where he pledged to build a new stadium, close to its existing stadium at Griffin Park. In 2013, Benham promoted Mark Warburton, another former City trader, as manager. By the 2014–2015 season, Brentford had been promoted to the EFL Championship, for the first time in 21 years.

Majority shareholder of Midtjylland In July 2014, Benham became the majority shareholder of FC Midtjylland (FCM), a club in the top-flight Danish Superliga, investing £6.2 million. Benham first became interested in Ankersen after reading his book, The Gold Mine Effect, in which he admitted having failed to predict the success of Simon Kjær, when he was a young footballer at the academy Ankersen had helped to set up. On 15 August 2023, Midtjylland announced that Matthew Benham had sold his shares in the club.

Road to Premier League Meanwhile, Brentford announced in February 2015 that it would part ways with Warburton at the end of the season. At the time, it was widely reported in the media that Warburton was unhappy with the fact that Benham wanted to run Brentford based on "mathematical modelling", and with his elimination of the manager's veto on new signings,

Ahead of the 2015–2016 season, Brentford began identifying undervalued talent by applying mathematics and statistics, using its limited budget to sign them, developing players with high potential, and selling them on to other clubs for a sizeable profit on transfers. However, Benham dislikes the term and has stated, "The Moneyball label can be confusing because people think it is using any stats rather than trying to use them in a scientific way." Brentford fans were also initially apprehensive about the club's best players constantly being sold.

In 2021, Brentford won promotion to the Premier League, its first time in the top flight of English football in 74 years. Benham has rejected at least one offer to buy Brentford. Although he ranked as the least wealthy club owner in the Premier League, in March 2022, Benham had the highest approval rating in a survey of 10,500 Premier League fans conducted by Nick Harris.