By Tom Marriott
THERE is an unread copy of the Racing Post sitting on Ben Keith’s solid oak desk.
We are in Marylebone in his beautiful London flat just days before the biggest horse racing festival of the year gets under way in the Cotswolds.
As the owner of Star Sports, he will stand tall on his company’s pitch at the heart of the action in the betting ring at Cheltenham and lay some of the biggest bets struck all week.
“Do you know, I genuinely couldn’t tell you the name of a horse running at Cheltenham,” confesses the immaculately dressed Keith.
“I’m clueless and certainly don’t listen to the experts. I keep it simple. Always have done and always will do. I bet to figures and that’s it.”
Star Sports have fielded some monster bets in recent years, including a whopping £600,000 plunge on Energumene to win last year’s Queen Mother Champion Chase.
However, Keith is keen to point out that it’s not just the high-rollers his firm accommodates.
“We have a large presence at Cheltenham now with two pitches and the Sovereign Lounge Betting Shop.
“The vast majority of the bets we take are from average small-staking punters, but it’s the bigger ones that get the publicity.”
Leaning back in his leather office chair, Keith can remember the exact moment his journey to owning and building the UK’s fastest-growing bookmaker began.
“My father returned home one night in the early 1990s and announced that he had been invited to Hove dogs for a work function,” reminisces Keith.
“The truth is my mother was tired and told me to go. I can remember it like it was yesterday and she wanted me out from under her feet.”
The rest, as they say, is history and the then 13-year-old Keith recalls placing a £2 bet on a greyhound called Sara Jones.
“The lights went down, the hare started to move and as the traps burst opened my world was about to change,” he added.
“I was captivated by this world, captivated by the frenetic movement, the flying sand and the energy of the betting ring.”
That was the moment the then adolescent Keith entered what he describes as ‘adult life’ starting with the launch of ‘The Benjamin Keith Car Cleaning Company’ in Hurstpierpoint which gave him enough money to buy both the Racing Post and The Sporting Life every day.
And it wasn’t long until he became the school bookmaker, taking bets from both pupils and teachers at lunchtime before sneaking off to the dogs or the races in the afternoon.
“It was at Hove dogs and Plumpton races where I witnessed the betting ring at work for the first time.
“I carried a small notebook at all times and would record all the racing slang, percentages and things that I would see. They started to call me ‘The Professor’ at Hove.”
During school holidays, Keith would do work experience for different bookies including the sports spread betting arm of City Index.
Paul Austin, who was in charge at the time, promised the then 15-year-old Keith a job once he’d completed his A-levels and was true to his word.
He started a week after “dismally failing my A-levels” and stayed there for a couple of years, before being invited to lunch by the late Kelvin Richardson with a young man from Brighton.
“Apparently this guy had a keen interest in football betting and wanted to set up a spread betting bookmaker for Victor Chandler,” Keith said.
“He offered me a job, and thinking it was time for a change, I immediately accepted and headed to Gibraltar.”
It was clear fairly early on, though, that this venture was never going to get started and Keith decided to venture out on his own after landing a few quid on a horse called Pension Fund at 33/1.
“The very next day, I went to my boss and told him that I didn’t have much interest in his Asian Handicap football that he was doing on the side and that I would be returning to England as I had decided to become an on-course bookie with my £10,000 worth of winnings on Pension Fund.”
That was a decision Keith says tongue-in-cheek he will regret forever: “What a fool I was! My boss was a certain Tony Bloom. I could have become a billionaire by just cleaning the man’s shoes!”
Anyway, venturing out on his own was tough for Keith, who spent his twenties making what he calls “error after error”.
It was a testing period that saw him buy and sell a house, but he chose to learn from it moving into his thirties.
“I chose to see things, situations, people and opportunities for what they were, rather than what I wanted them to be.”
What followed was an extraordinary surge of success that has seen him build up a multi-million-pound bookmaking and property business over a remarkable 15-year period.
Betting at Cheltenham, Royal Ascot, sponsoring and betting at the Greyhound Derby, have all been dreams come true.
Greyhound racing remains a true passion for Keith, whose retired former racer Goldie sits curled up on his office floor.
“It has been a pleasure to be able to give back to a sport and community that has often been harsh and ruthless in its lessons, but also incredibly kind with friendships and camaraderie.
“I am so very grateful to greyhound racing and feel at one and comfortable when I’m at the dogs.
“I hope that Star Sports will have further involvement in the sport and over time push the sport back to its former glory days.”
Focus for now hones in on the coming days at Cheltenham, which Keith describes as “unrelenting from start to finish”.
“As a bookmaker, you must be ready for any type of combat and shift in the market. The swings and gambles are huge.
“I am not as brave as I was there in my early twenties as I had nothing to lose then. Now I have the responsibility of not only winning or losing a lot of money, but also representing my 300 staff.”
Star Sports has a suite of betting shops all over the country, including the newly-opened betting lounge in Curzon Street, Mayfair.
“Of course, I’m proud of how far we have come as a firm, but we continue to push forward. We are investing in the high street when others are closing shops.
“We continue to stand firm in the betting ring when many have abandoned their roots. We certainly aren’t resting on our laurels.”
