While professional footballers are forbidden to bet on football, many of them enjoy betting on other sports such as horse racing. Lots of football stars over the years have even taken their passion for betting on horses one step or even two steps further by either owning or training racehorses.
Famous Footballers That Own Racehorses
There have been lots of footballers that have invested some of their vast earnings in buying a racehorse or owning shares in some with a few friends, but there are also a few for whom horse racing has become as equally as important to them as football.
One of the most famous current footballers to have been bitten by the horseracing bug is the star French International striker Antoine Griezmann. He was also lucky with his first purchase Tornibush, who won six races, including a group 3, for his owner when in training with Philippe Decouz.
That Group race success has allowed Tornibush to stand at stud, which could easily bolster the earning of Griezmann even further, not that he needs to as he already earns millions of Euros each season. But Griezmann has already reinvested the profits from his lucky start in horse racing, by purchasing seven more racehorses.
Former England striker Mick Channon was one of the first professional footballers to fall in love with horse racing and he turned his passion for the sport into a new career as a trainer once he’d hung up his boots. Channon has trained hundreds of winners, also part owning a variety of Group 1 winners such as Youmzain.
Another England striker to develop more than just a love of betting on horses is Michael Owen, who splashed out on a purpose-built training facility and put trainer Tom Dascombe in charge of training a string of thoroughbreds.
Owen’s stable attracted other popular footballing legends such as ex-Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson. But Fergie had already been involved in horse racing for a while, enjoying much success, including winning multiple Group 1 wins and Classics with Rock of Gibraltar.
Niall Quinn and Micky Quinn are two other football legends that have enjoyed much success. Niall Quinn bought a couple of very useful fillies that proved to be money-spinners, while Micky Quinn followed in Channon’s footsteps by becoming a trainer, without ever reaching the same heights.
Wayne Rooney also dipped his toe into the waters of racehorse ownership, but a reported investment of around £200,000 only brought him one winner, and that’s without the money he bet on them.
Joey Barton has always liked to do things a little differently off and on the pitch, and his racehorse My Propeller was retired to the paddocks after a couple of wins. He also co-owned Listed race winner Crying Lightning.
Are Footballers Good Gamblers?
We can’t recall any stories about footballers being good gamblers, but there are lots of stories about footballers that have racked up big gambling debts. Eidur Gudjohnsen reputedly lost millions gambling while injured when at Barcelona, while Arsenal duo Paul Merson and Kenny Sansom are both believed to have blown all the money that they earned playing football.
Keith Gillespie had to declare himself bankrupt, while Didier Hamann once lost over £250,000 on one bet. Wayne Rooney is also believed to have racked up a gambling debt of over £700,000, though he had the money to pay it off.
Are Footballers Good Tipsters?
Having enjoyed long and often fruitful careers, you could be forgiven for thinking that professional footballers would make excellent football tipsters. However, while many ex-footballers talk a good game after becoming pundits, none of them are renowned for being successful professional gamblers.
Sky Sports uses a lot of ex-footballers as pundits, including Gary Neville, Jamie Redknapp, and Thierry Henri but, while they might be able to offer post-match analysis, their pre-match predictions are often wide of the mark.
Perhaps that’s why several bookmakers use ex-footballers as ambassadors, with many of them doubling as tipsters. But while these footballers might give a variety of winning tips, do you think they give enough winners to make a profit from betting on football? If they did, do you think the bookmakers would employ them to give tips? So, ask yourself, should you be following the tips of ex-footballers?
Meanwhile, if you think footballers rarely make poor football tipsters, do you think they’re any more likely to make great horse racing tipsters? No, neither do we.
Whose Football And Horse Racing Tips Should I Follow?
While football pundits may have a backroom staff feeding statistics into their earpieces to make them sound better than they are, the truth is pundits don’t spend hours studying stats and form in the way that professional tipsters do. This studying is why pro punters and tipsters find a steady stream of value tips that help them to make long-term profits from betting.
Here at Betting Gods, our tipsters make it their life’s work to find these types of value tips and spend hours every day working their way through mountains of statistics and form to find them. They also don’t get paid ridiculous salaries for talking on TV and leading punters astray. Instead, they live off a combination of the profits they make from gambling and the subscriptions they charge serious punters for their advice.
So, if you haven’t got the time to do as much studying as our tipsters, don’t worry, you can still be a serious punter by following the advice of the Betting Gods tipsters. We have tipsters that provide tips for football and horse racing, as well as other sports such as golf, tennis, cricket, basketball, ice hockey, and American football.
The Betting Gods free tips are also easy to follow. All you need to do is drop us your email, and we’ll send you a sample of free tips from our professional tipsters every day.
If you’d like to dedicate your betting to one or more of these sports, you can also purchase affordable monthly subscriptions that will allow you to receive all of one or more of our tipsters’ tips.
Finding your ideal tipster is also simple. Just check out the Betting Gods tipster page where you can browse profiles of all our tipsters. You can check out important statistics such as their total winnings, average monthly profits, return on investment, and winning percentage.
