Brighton blueprint that comes with £10m Hearts investment earns 'enthusiastic' response as David Weir factor hyped

If Hearts can team up with Tony Bloom they may be onto a winner like never before in their 150-year history.

The Brighton and Hove Albion owner and chairman has been in talks with Tynecastle over a £10million investment. Bringing the brains - and the software - behind the best-run club in Britain to Gorgie has the potential to be a game-changer for Hearts. Bloom, 54, has gradually transformed his beloved Brighton from League One to a Europa League club.

His bankrolling of that rise has bucked the trend of so many Premier League operations boosted by foreign investment but blighted by eye-watering losses and high managerial turnover. At the heart of Brighton’s success is the mathematical genius and his data-driven player recruitment model. His company, Starlizard, was established in 2006. A team of analysts, informants close to clubs and stats experts were assembled to assist the company to win big at football betting throughout Europe.

Employees gathered all the in-depth information on each team and were able to match up opponents in any game. A knowledge of dressing room mood and which player has been up all night with a new baby could be just as valuable as vital team news that was yet to reach the public domain.

It gained the firm an edge on the bookmakers’ odds, leading to massive profits. That data-driven approach has since been transferred to recruiting players for Brighton throughout what has been a calculatedly incremental approach towards the top of English football.

Bloom has said: “I realised that applying mathematics and complex algorithms to sport allowed me to assess the probability of sporting events more accurately than the markets. Naturally, this was a significant advantage when it came to betting on