Who’s gambling on The Sportsman?

 

L/R Jeremy Deedes, Max Aitken, Ben & Zac Goldsmith

An amusing £2 million television advertising campaign for The Sportsman, is attracting more attention than Britain’s latest daily newspaper it is advertising.  The ads show a bookmaker refusing to allow a customer to place a bet because he is carrying a copy of The Sportsman.

But this will not be too much of a concern for the group of investors in Sports Betting Media Ltd, who are gambling £11.5 million on the paper's launch because they expect to make a killing not from newsstand sales but from the dramatic growth of the £40 billion a year Internet sports betting.

The investors are a motley crew and include the former Telegraph Newspapers chief executive, Jeremy Deedes, who is chairman of SBM;  Max Aitken, the 28-year-old great grandson of Lord Beaverbrook, creator of the Express newspaper group, and the Sportsman's managing director; Ben and Zac Goldsmith, sons of the late Sir James Goldsmith, the controversial financier; a syndicate led by Ben Arbib, son of the city financier Sir Martyn Arbib; James Osbourne, managing director of Aspinall’s and property tycoon Martin Myers.

When fully up and running The Sportman’s website will carry links to online bookmakers and gambling sites in return for a share of the revenues made from readers clicking through to place their bets.

The first test will be the World Cup in June which is expected to be the biggest sports betting event ever.

I know who I would put my money on.

Thanks for reading Big Business

David Davis
www.writer4business.com .