Who is James Bord? Poker Champion Leading Bid for Sheffield Wednesday FC

Posted on: December 29, 2025, 09:11h. 

Last updated on: December 29, 2025, 10:38h.

Philip Conneller @casinoorgphilc Read More
Expertise: Gaming Business, Regulation, Tribal Gaming.
  • Bord emerges as the preferred bidder to buy crisis-hit Sheffield Wednesday soccer team
  • Club in administration, hit by points deductions, facing relegation
  • Bord’s links to Bloom and Benham’s data-led gambling-to-soccer model

Former World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) champion James Bord is the preferred bidder to rescue embattled English Championship soccer team Sheffield Wednesday.

Sheffield Wednesday, James Bord, EFL Owners and Directors’ Test, administration, sports betting analytics
James Bord, center, pictured watching his Scottish team Dunfermline play Falkirk at The Falkirk Stadium in March 2025. (Image: Mark Scates/Getty)

The club’s administrators announced last Wednesday they had granted preferred-bidder status to an unnamed consortium, now believed to be one led by Bord, following the conclusion of the initial bidding process.

Information about who is part of Bord’s consortium and where the money is coming from was not immediately publicly available.

Sheffield Wednesday, known affectionately as the Owls, languishes at the bottom of the Championship, English soccer’s second tier. The club has been given two points deductions since entering administration – a term akin to Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US – following long-running financial struggles under owner Dejphon Chansiri. As a result, it lies 30 points behind the nearest team, and relegation to the third tier seems inevitable.

James Bord: What We Know

Las Vegas-based Bord successfully led a consortium to take over Scottish club Dunfermline in early 2025, and has minority ownership of Spanish La Liga 2 team Cordoba CF.

Bord is a former Citigroup banker who left the world of finance in his mid-20s to pursue his interests in poker and sports betting. In 2010, he won the WSOPE main event for $1,313,611, becoming the first British champion of the tournament. At the time, he also ran a training and staking company for players, known as the Poker Farm.

Bord is the founder of San Francisco–based Short Circuit Science, a company specializing in sports data analytics, medical prescription technology, and climate adaptation analysis.

In the mid-to-late 2000s, he worked for Tony Bloom, whose gambling syndicate and advisory firm, StarLizard, has become one of the most successful operations in soccer betting. Bloom is the owner of English Premier League (EPL) team Brighton and Hove Albion.

At some point, Bord jumped ship from StarLizard to work for another sports betting fund, Smartodds, operated by Matthew Benham, who had also previously worked for Bloom. Benham later became an investor in the Matchbook betting exchange, and in 2012, took over the reins at his boyhood club, Brentford FC.

Final Hurdles

Bloom, Benham, and now Bord belong to a small but influential group who have carried the rigorous, data-driven methods that made them successful in professional gambling into soccer ownership and strategy.

The ailing Owls hope Bord’s data can restore the club to its former glory. Before that, a couple of hurdles remain. He still has to pass the EFL’s Owners and Directors’ test (ODT), which bars individuals who own, control, or have a significant interest in a betting business if that involvement creates a conflict of interest with soccer.

EFL officials are also cautious about owners with deep expertise in betting markets because of concerns — real or perceived — that someone could use club ownership to influence or exploit betting outcomes.