Non-league footballer fined £50k for beating the bookies

A NON-LEAGUE footballer has been handed the kind of FA fine normally dished out to Premier League stars, after admitting placing almost a thousand bets on football matches over his 10-year career.

- TRISTAN CORK

But because James Byrne was so good at beating the bookies, he ended up winning almost £50,000 over the years - so has been ordered to pay a fine equal to the amount he won.

The fine of £48,388.66 is believed to be the biggest fine ever given to a player in Step 4 of the English non-league pyramid system, and ranks alongside the kinds of fines given out in much more high-profile cases involving footballers caught gambling, including England’ internationals Ivan Toney and Kieran Trip-pier.

But while a fine in the tens of thousands represents less than a week's earnings for many Premier League stars, the £48,000 fine for Portishead Town’s 29-year-old midfielder is roughly 500 times his weekly pay for playing in the Southern League Division One South.

After hearing Byrne had won and spent the £48,000 over the ten years, the FA have offered the possibility of a payment plan. If every penny he earns from playing football goes into paying the fine, he'd need to carry on playing at that level for another 10 years.

An FA investigation found that Byrne - who has played for Step 4 teams across Bristol and Somerset after being released from Exeter City’s academy - has a passion for maths and data, and has a master’s degree from the University of Bristol.

He told the FA he works as a sports data consultant and as a semipro footballer, and had realised his knowledge and application of maths and data on lower league football was better than the bookies.

Over 10 years from the beginning of 2015 to when the FA finally rumbled him at the end of 2024, he placed a total of 992 bets on football matches.