Brighton, Royal Ascot and a Premier League passion for horse racing

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We may now be deep into the Premier League’s off-season, with a summer of transfer business slowly clicking into gear, but this week the attention of Brighton & Hove Albion chairman Tony Bloom and many of his players will be on Royal Ascot.

One of the showpiece occasions of the British sporting summer shines a light on the football club’s affinity with horse racing. Bloom and several players in the first-team squad, including Brighton’s Georginio Rutter and James Milner, find excitement in owning horses when they are not concentrating on collecting points in the Premier League.

The trio all have horses entered to run at Ascot, where each of the five days of high-class racing is preceded by pomp and pageantry. Members of the royal family and other dignitaries ride up the home straight at the course in Berkshire, a short drive west of London, in horse-drawn carriages. The meeting’s Royal Procession tradition celebrates its 200th anniversary this year. The dress code for many of the Ascot racegoers is top hats and tails for men, lavish dresses for women.

Ceremonies over, the action begins with the opening race of the meeting on Tuesday, the Queen Anne Stakes. Bloom will be trying to win the mile-long contest with Lake Forest, a horse trained by William Haggas.

Bloom and Haggas have history at the royal meeting. They won the Wokingham Stakes in 2009 with High Standing, owned jointly by Bloom and professional gambler Harry Findlay. Bloom also landed Ascot’s Queen Alexandra Stakes two years in a row (2021 and 2022) with Stratum, from the powerful Irish stable of trainer Willie Mullins. The jockey on the first of those occasions was Ryan Moore, from Brighton.

Bloom became Brighton’s chairman a month before Lake Forest provided his first success at the royal meeting.

Horse racing is in his blood almost as much as the football club that the lifelong Brighton fan has transformed over the past 16 years with his own money. Bloom has turned Brighton from third-tier strugglers without a permanent home ground when he took over into a thriving Premier League team at the 32,000-seater Amex Stadium.

Ryan Moore riding Stratum to win the Queen Alexandra Stakes in 2021 (Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images)

He was close to his late grandfather, Harry, a former vice-chairman of the club, hotelier and car dealer who owned racing greyhounds as a hobby. When he was a 15-year-old schoolboy, Bloom used a fake ID to access betting shops because he was still three years under the legal age permitted to enter them in the UK.

Racehorse ownership success has blossomed alongside Bloom’s sports betting empire, which has seen him rise to 213th on the 2025 Sunday Times Rich List, with a personal wealth increase of £5million up to £721m ($979m). Eight of his flat racehorses (as opposed to jump racing over fences) with four UK trainers are owned in partnership with Ian McAleavy, head of football for nine years at Starlizard, a global leader in specialist online sports betting advice established by Bloom in Camden, north London, in 2006.

Although nothing quite matches Bloom’s love for his football club, he outlined his plans to make an impact in flat racing with McAleavy during a speech at the Gimcrack Dinner in December 2023 at York Racecourse, where, four months earlier, Lake Forest won the prestigious Gimcrack Stakes run over six furlongs (three-quarters of a mile/1.2km).

“I’ve always had high ambitions in horse racing too,” Bloom told an audience of racing aficionados. “I’ve always wanted to experience the excitement of winning the biggest races in the UK calendar. I’m delighted to say that some of those ambitions have already been met, and Ian and I are determined to pursue more successes on the flat in the near future. That will mean investing in more horses, expanding our stable and, through that, in our own way, making a bigger contribution to UK racing.”

Bloom has been true to his word.

Lake Forest finished second in the Commonwealth Cup at Ascot a year ago before landing a £2.8million prize in The Golden Eagle race in Sydney in November. That triumph resonated for Bloom in the Australian homeland of his wife, Linda.

Two more of the four horses in Bloom’s partnership with McAleavy that are trained by Haggas have Ascot entries on Friday: Sky Majesty in the Commonwealth Cup and The Reverend in the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes. Venetian Sun (trained by Karl Burke) and Dash of Azure (from Ralph Beckett’s yard) have also won races this year for the pair.

Friday could be a busy one for them, with Venetian Sun due to run in the meeting’s Albany Stakes and Dash of Azure in the Sandringham Stakes later in the afternoon.

Bloom has other horses he owns individually, including Thunder Ball, which is entered for the Buckingham Palace Stakes on Thursday. Thunder Ball’s trainer Brian Toomey tells The Athletic: “Tony really loves his horses. Nothing gets in the way of the care they get. He’s a successful man. He likes a plan, and to work back from there. He gets a huge sense of enjoyment out of it. There is more to it than Tony Bloom owning horses and gambling. He is very passionate about it.”

Bloom’s successes in racing are not confined to the flat. He has won major prizes at the Cheltenham Festival, the UK’s showpiece jumps meeting, held annually in March. Energumene (pictured with Bloom at the top of this article) won the Queen Mother Champion Chase, over two miles, in both 2022 and 2023. Bloom sprang a shock at Cheltenham this year when Poniros — based with Beckett during its flat career and purchased for 200,000 guineas (£210,000) last October — won the Triumph Hurdle on its jumps debut at odds of 100-1. Energumene and Poniros are now trained by Mullins.

Bloom and jockey Paul Townend, having been presented with the trophy by Queen Camilla, left, after Energumene’s win at Cheltenham in 2023 (Glyn Kirk/Getty Images)

Bloom is set to attempt an audacious jumps and flat double with Poniros currently entered for today’s Ascot Stakes as well as the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes, the latter of which would give him two runners in that race if The Reverend also goes. Poniros has an entry as well in Saturday’s curtain closer, the Queen Alexandra Stakes.

Brighton’s signing of Milner after he left Liverpool as a free agent in summer 2023 sparked an influx of players at the club with an interest in racehorse ownership. Milner’s transfer again made him a team-mate of former Liverpool and England colleague Adam Lallana. Both owned horses at the Manor House stables of trainer Hugo Palmer in Cheshire, north-west England. It’s a yard with a footballing history, having been converted by former Liverpool and England striker Michael Owen and his wife Louise from a cattle barn into a training facility 18 years ago.

Several Brighton players past and present joined forces with Milner and Lallana, creating the Two Plus Three Two Plus Four ownership syndicate. Lallana (who played for Southampton last season), Pascal Gross (now with Borussia Dortmund), Billy Gilmour (Napoli) and Shane Duffy (Norwich City) have moved on from the Amex. But Milner, Brighton’s captain Lewis Dunk, Danny Welbeck, Jan Paul van Hecke, Adam Webster, Bart Verbruggen and Jason Steele are all part of the squad that finished eighth in the 2024-25 Premier League under first-year German head coach Fabian Hurzeler.

The syndicates’ horses with Palmer have names linked to the south-coast club’s ‘Seagulls’ nickname — Seagulls Eleven, The Flying Seagull, Seagolazo and Mr Seagull. The Flying Seagull had a win at Chester racecourse in June 2024. Seagolazo was also first past the post there the following month and is now entered in Thursday’s Britannia Stakes at Ascot. Seagulls Eleven, the best of the bunch, could run in Saturday’s Jersey Stakes. Jockeys riding for the syndicate wear blue and white striped silks that match Brighton’s colours.

“You share a lot of memories playing with the lads on the pitch, but this is another way to share some memories, ” goalkeeper Steele told website Sporting Life. “Hugo will tell you that we are always asking questions on the group chats and we absolutely love it.”

When Bloom sanctioned the £40million purchase of French forward Rutter from Leeds United in August, he was signing a kindred spirit.

Growing up in Brittany, north-western France, Rutter was a regular visitor with his family to the area’s Vannes racecourse.

Rutter joined Brighton from Leeds in August 2024 (Steve Bardens/Getty Images)

Fond childhood memories were rekindled when he joined Leeds from German club Hoffenheim in January 2023, as there were racecourses nearby at York, Doncaster and Ripon.

“I met a French friend who had a stable near his house,” Rutter told Brighton’s club podcast. “I saw one horse with his tongue out all of the time. He said if you want a horse, there are sales. Two weeks after, he called me about an owner wanting to sell a horse. It was a horse with the tongue out. The mum was born the same day as me, 20 April, and I say, ‘It is a sign’. So, I say I am going to buy him, and another one. After that, I buy a lot of horses.”

Some of Rutter’s horses are with York-based trainer David O’Meara. These include Bopedro, running in the Royal Hunt Cup at Ascot on Wednesday.

Rutter would be a regular early-morning visitor to O’Meara’s stables before training sessions with Leeds. Since joining Brighton, the 23-year-old has teamed up with David Menuisier, a fellow Frenchman whose training operation is based at Coombelands Stables in Pulborough, West Sussex, a 45-minute drive from the Amex Stadium.

He has two horses with Menuisier. Brighlee, named as a nod to his current club and previous one, finished a promising second at odds of 33-1 on her debut last week, and Le Morbihan is named after the part of Brittany where Rutter grew up. He also has a half-share, with Menuisier, in a horse bought by the trainer in May and yet to be named.

“He is really passionate about racing,” Menuisier told The Athletic. “Not just racing but racehorses. He comes to the yard, he is really natural with them, so it’s not just for the prestige. He really is passionate about the whole thing and it’s refreshing, because there are not too many youngsters interested in the sport. Beyond the fact he is a footballer, it is great to have young people that take a liking to the industry. They (footballers) know the problems that horses may encounter. They understand that.”

Rutter also has horses in France, with Chantilly-based trainer Xavier Blanchet. His retirement plans are already in place.

“After football, you are not going to see me,” he said during that club podcast. “I’ll live in the farm with my horse.”

(Top photo: Glyn Kirk/Getty Images)

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