Six years in betting taught me more about football analysis than any course ever could.
I know that's a provocative thing to say. There are some excellent courses out there, and I'd never discourage anyone from formal education. But the reality of my path into football was messier, less linear, and far more dependent on transferable skills than any structured programme could have predicted.
The gambling years
I spent six years working in the betting industry at Sky Betting & Gaming. Trading and pricing football matches, supervising teams, and being around data-driven decision making every day. It was demanding, fast-paced, and relentlessly focused on one thing: making better predictions than the market.
That environment taught me to think probabilistically. Not in the academic sense, but in a practical, money-on-the-line sense. When you're pricing a match and your margin for error is a few percentage points, you learn very quickly how to separate signal from noise.
The betting industry doesn't care about narratives. It cares about accuracy. That mindset translates directly to recruitment.
I also learned how to work with data, how to think about models and what makes them useful, and how to make decisions under uncertainty. All of which turned out to be exactly what football clubs need from their analysts and scouts.
The pivot
The pivot didn't happen overnight. It started during lockdown when I had more free time and started sharing football analysis publicly. Data visualisations, player comparisons, short threads breaking down why certain metrics mattered for certain positions.
People noticed. Not because the work was revolutionary, but because it was consistent and it demonstrated a clear way of thinking about the game. DMs turned into conversations. Conversations turned into freelance projects. Freelance projects turned into a network.
Within eighteen months, I'd gone from posting analysis on X to working with clubs and agents on recruitment projects. Within two years, I was doing it full-time.
What transferred
The specific tools changed — I stopped pricing Asian handicap markets and started building player shortlists — but the underlying skills were identical. Evaluating evidence. Weighing probabilities. Communicating findings to people who don't think in numbers. Managing uncertainty.
If you're coming from a non-football background, the biggest mistake you can make is assuming your experience doesn't count. It almost certainly does. The question is whether you can translate it into the language of football.
The honest bit
I won't pretend it was easy. The pay cut was significant. The industry is precarious. Job security in football is a concept, not a reality. But I also won't pretend I regret it for a second.
If you're sitting in a different industry right now, thinking about making the jump — start building your proof. Show people how you think. The opportunities will follow.