Along with his wads of money, huge self-confidence on digital camera, entry to non-public jets and helicopters, plus superstar stardust supplied by Luke Littler, Robert Heneghan exudes the air of an all-conquering horse racing tipster and is extraordinarily eager to let the world find out about himself.
His social media individuals movie him sitting in jets in pinstriped fits, imploring individuals to affix the membership of 15,000 subscribers whom he says pay to get his betting suggestions. They movie him at racecourses, putting massive wedges of £20 notes on horses, then brandishing profitable betting slips and taking massive wads of earnings again off bookies. Darts star Littler, who appeared alongside Heneghan in an government space at Cheltenham a couple of weeks again, was the topic of two of the movies he posted on the competition.
Heneghan has constructed a following of over a million throughout Instagram, X, Telegram, TikTok and the digital market Whop for his Eire-based ‘Professional Sports activities Recommendation’ firm and he’s clearly residing in some luxurious.
The 27-year-old Irishman’s firm’s newest monetary outcomes, for 2024, not publicly accessible however seen by Day by day Mail Sport, reveal a retained revenue of £1.73million. He claims to have been knowledgeable gambler since he was a 16-year-old. Land Registry paperwork reveal his residence to be a beach-front property valued at round £1m on Eire’s east coast. The accounts put his annual earnings within the yr to December 31, 2024, at £375,000.
Heneghan posted screenshots of £1.1m subscriber funds to his Stripe account in March and a fair larger determine after Aintree, with lots of of Professional Sports activities Recommendation members forking out £64 a month for his prime tier ‘elite VIP’ membership and 80,000 paying him £8.50 a month for his ‘customary’ facility. There’s even a ‘one-off’ £3,500 ‘Platinum Lifetime’ membership for many who are actually all-in. So there shouldn’t be a cloud in his sky.
But previously month, Heneghan urged his followers to place their cash into what was reported to be an unregistered, black-market playing web site – after which launched a Excessive Courtroom defamation motion in opposition to a well known member of the racing fraternity, who claimed he obtained threats of violence for writing about it.
Irish ‘tipster’ Robert Heneghan and darts star Luke Littler showcase their profitable tickets on the Cheltenham Pageant earlier this yr
Heneghan costs subscribers £64 a month for his prime tier ‘elite VIP’ membership and £8.50 a month for his ‘customary’ facility. There’s even a ‘one-off’ £3,500 ‘Platinum Lifetime’ membership for many who are actually all-in
The web site, Gambana, presupposed to be registered within the Indian Ocean island of Comoros. However the central financial institution which oversees the territory’s monetary regulation advised The Irish Occasions that the licence was ‘fraudulent’.
Gearoid Norris, a Cork-based racing pundit, former Paddy Energy worker and blogger whose sardonic tackle the racing world below the X persona @icyestretro constructed a following of 27,000, printed a widely-read submit on his Substack channel about Heneghan’s promotion of Gambana. He then claimed to have obtained an nameless name from somebody purporting to know his tackle and the pub he drank at and telling him if he continued writing in the identical vein: ‘I’m going to place a bullet by way of your head.’
Heneghan, who denied making any such name, sued Norris for defamation at Dublin’s Excessive Courtroom, the place a settlement was reached earlier this month. Norris, a mature scholar missing the means to pay, accepted it was not Heneghan who referred to as him, apologised and has undertaken to publish no additional materials on-line about him or Professional Sports activities Recommendation.
The promotion of an unregulated offshore playing outfit – working outdoors of the safeguards stopping the publicity of kids and susceptible younger individuals to playing – is way faraway from the picture of Professional Sports activities Recommendation that Heneghan presents to the world. He claims to be a disseminator of ‘The World’s Most Trusted Ideas’ and his web site proclaims his service to be five-star, with out specifying exactly who has awarded him such a ranking.
Heneghan addresses what seems to be a largely younger male viewers in the identical means as many influencers within the so-called manosphere, asking them why on earth they’re lacking a path to wealth he’s providing them. ‘Are you sick of dropping from your individual betting?’ he asks. ‘I’m probably the most adopted horse pundit on the planet. I’m precisely what you’re on the lookout for.’
Many members of the racing fraternity have advised Day by day Mail Sport that they had been unaware of Heneghan till he recorded some successes simply earlier than the pandemic, in 2020.
The primary posts on his present Instagram account date to March 2021 – a 12/1 every means wager on a horse which received at a course south west of Dublin. Professional Sports activities Recommendation, which additionally offers soccer and darts suggestions, was arrange by his father and integrated 5 years in the past. Its present X account was arrange 5 years in the past.
Heneghan turned higher recognized when getting himself filmed at soccer’s Qatar World Cup and the World Darts Championship, cultivating a picture of being a person on the centre of issues. A click-hungry younger viewers picked up on him and one other darts star, Luke Humphries, started showing on a few of his output.
Littler’s appearances with Heneghan started at Cheltenham, earlier this month, the place he and his darts rival Humphries had been filmed for a Professional Sports activities Recommendation social media submit, by which every picked a horse for the tipster to put a £1,000 wager on, with any winnings going to charity.
Heneghan targets a largely younger male viewers in the identical means as many influencers within the so-called manosphere, asking them why on earth they’re lacking a path to wealth he’s providing them
On condition that Littler is nineteen and it’s in opposition to Promoting Requirements Authority guidelines within the UK, for anybody who’s, or who seems to be, below 25 to play a major function in a playing advert, mainstream betting companies have been astonished by Littler’s validation of Heneghan. Even Paddy Energy, sponsor of the World Darts Championships, have been unable to make use of him to advertise their merchandise due to his age.
A spokesman for Littler mentioned: ‘For the avoidance of doubt, Luke has no enterprise affiliation or promotional relationship with Professional Sports activities Recommendation or Robert Heneghan.’
Typically, Heneghan doesn’t search such co-stars. His social media workforce – flanked by his safety element, based on a number of sources we’ve spoken to – movie him handing bookmakers the packets of money and watching his backed horses race. The sources have advised Day by day Mail Sport that these bets are positioned by Heneghan early within the racing day, when the racecourse is quiet and bookies comparatively unoccupied, creating time and privateness to excellent social media clips.
It’s thus unclear what number of pre-race movies are made on horses that subsequently lose. Heneghan has mounted authorized challenges in opposition to bookmakers who say he has positioned such bets with them.
One bookmaker on X, James Lovell, tweeted throughout Cheltenham that he had taken down a submit ‘concerning a tipster betting with me at Cheltenham’ after taking authorized recommendation. ‘It’s a loopy world we dwell in when regulated playing is below such sturdy scrutiny and content material provision goes unchecked,’ he mentioned.
Heneghan does publicly promote a few of his dropping bets, to counter claims that he hides his losses and solely promotes his winners – allegations he vehemently denies.
However the extent to which any damaging information protection of him has been shut down is extraordinary. The Irish Occasions reported earlier this month that a few of its personal articles about Heneghan and Professional Sports activities Recommendation, in addition to movies about him posted by a well known solicitor, Terry Gorry, had been delisted from Google and faraway from social media websites due to suspect copyright complaints that, in some instances, had been comprised of Vietnam and Indonesia.
The newspaper, which has extensively lined Heneghan’s promotion of Gambana and the following Norris Excessive Courtroom case, found its protection of each had been scrubbed from Google search outcomes.
Numerous the copyright complaints had been primarily based on weird claims that the items breached the copyright of New York Submit articles from the Nineties. A kind of articles was in regards to the New York Giants American soccer workforce whereas one other was about crime in New York. Among the tales have since been restored. Norris’ in style Twitter account continues to be suspended.
Up to now, Heneghan has not responded to requests for touch upon the topic.
Heneghan has additionally used darts star Luke Humphries (proper) to advertise his enterprise
The outcomes of Heneghan’s tipped horses, detailed on his web site, suggests a modest efficiency. Racing consultants have advised us that he suggestions horses that any moderately well-versed follower of type may go for, typically betting on a number of mounts in a single race to cowl himself or taking a ‘cowl wager’ at decrease odds, which implies returns are settled at these odds if the horse wins, with a refund given if the horse finishes second or third.
Heneghan positioned £2,500 every means on Aintree Grand Nationwide winner I Am Maximus, the favorite, at 9-1, so was effectively on revenue on the race – regardless of not one of the different three horses he had bets on – Grangeclare West, Jagwar and Spanish Harlem – ending the race.
To the uninitiated, dropping huge sums of money may seem disastrous, however trade insiders view it as mere ‘advertising spend’ for Heneghan: half and parcel of a enterprise mannequin which sees him stand to earn hundreds of thousands in new subscriptions revenue from a excessive profile meet like Cheltenham or Aintree, the place his informal, uninitiated younger viewers is on the lookout for eye-catching recommendation.
‘He can afford to lose that money, so long as he could make it on the subscriptions,’ says one supply. ‘Having all these massive stakes will get the eyeballs in, will get the eye. He has to maintain churning, churning; getting that PR publicity.’
In that sense, his Cheltenham this yr was successful, with the Littler movies going viral and bringing what appeared to have been a giant uplift in subscribers on the Thursday of the meet. ‘It’s all about Cheltenham for him,’ says the supply. ‘You might have a superb Cheltenham and you keep these individuals into Aintree, after which make the Royal Ascot push.’
Lots of his tipped horses run at obscure abroad venues in Argentina, Chile and the US. Just one bookmaker – Guess 365 – runs a market on these area of interest races, which implies a better probability of the chances being much less scrutinised and due to this fact extra beneficiant to bettors. New sign-ups betting on these horses shall be permitted solely a really temporary interval of wins earlier than their accounts are suspended or ceilings imposed on their earnings.
Betting consultants have advised us that Heneghan’s members additionally have to be in his ‘elite’ £64-a-month VIP membership to get the ideas on the headline odds. The ‘customary’ members get them hours later and even that extra privileged group have to be extraordinarily fast to catch the marketed costs earlier than the next quantity of bets brings the chances down.
Heneghan positioned £2,500 every means on Grand Nationwide winner I Am Maximus, the favorite, at 9-1
Heneghan methodically data all his suggestions intimately. However it’s the huge image which pulls within the sign-ups: the clips of him marching in direction of a non-public jet at Aintree with a suitcase in his hand, shaking arms with coach Willie Mullins at an enclosure, and brandishing a profitable ticket with Littler.
That demographic could take nice enjoyment of all of it, however habit charities are shocked by the projection of playing as a shortcut to immense wealth and a jet-set way of life for these persuaded to flee the tradition of the modest wager and, in betting parlance, probably chasing losses reasonably than chasing bets. ‘We’d be carpeted and closely fined if we marketed on this means,’ says a supply at one established playing agency, which requested to not be named.
Matt Zarb-Cousin, director of Clear Up Playing and co-founder of Gamban, an app that helps individuals with playing addictions, mentioned that movies of influencer tipsters putting enormous sums of cash on horses risked dragging impressionable younger individuals into playing addictions.
‘Social media platforms and people influencers working on them have a duty to know the impact of this type of messaging,’ he tells Day by day Mail Sport. ‘This behaviour appeals on to the demographic of younger males, aged 18-24, who’ve the best incidence of drawback playing and who’re driving the vast majority of the requires assist.’
Clear Up Playing has campaigned for better transparency about hyperlinks between tipsters and operators reminiscent of Gambana. Heneghan does embody a accountable playing message in a few of his posts. The grandiosity of his clips is completely at variance with it.
He’s not alone, on this respect. Stephen Energy, one other racing content-maker selling to younger audiences, can be filmed staking huge sums of money, although the horses he suggestions which lose are very a lot a part of his narrative and he wears his coronary heart on his sleeve. This has contributed to the recognition of Energy – aka @racingblogger.
In contrast to Heneghan, Energy has been introduced into racing’s inside sanctum, with entry to trainers like Gordon Elliott, Gavin Cromwell and Mullins and free flights out to Australia and Dubai funded by race organisers, who see his social media following as a way of attracting new followers. In Energy’s case, racing is allying itself with a person who’s encouraging huge spending on betting.
Heneghan has launched clips of him marching in direction of a non-public jet at Aintree with a suitcase in his hand, and shaking arms with coach Willie Mullins (above)
‘It’s all about Cheltenham for Heneghan,’ says one supply. ‘You might have a superb Cheltenham and you keep these individuals into Aintree, after which make the Royal Ascot push’
At time of publication, Heneghan had not responded to frequent makes an attempt by Day by day Mail Sport to contact him. We’ve got additionally made a number of approaches to the Dublin authorized agency Kane Tuohy, which represented Heneghan in his defamation motion in opposition to Norris, asking that our inquiry be put to him as a matter of public curiosity.
The agency advised us that they solely acted for him in reference to the Norris case and that ‘our retainer in respect thereof is at an finish’. The agency didn’t affirm if he had been made conscious of our inquiries. Gambana haven’t responded to inquiries.
An in depth evaluation of Heneghan’s service by skilled full-time Betfair dealer Caan Berry, printed in February, discovered that an correct evaluation of him, and the three skilled tipsters he claims to have working for him, is troublesome, since it’s unattainable to find out which membership tiers his outcomes utilized to. He boasts of reaching greater than ‘1,500 revenue factors’ with out defining what this implies. There isn’t a unbiased verification of his outcomes.
Trustpilot feedback for his service embody a number of one-star evaluations from customers claiming that they’d been blocked or banned after questioning alternatives, having paid for memberships. Berry factors to Trustpilot complaints about unreliable tipping instances, suggestions being posted 20 minutes earlier than a race is because of begin and odds not being attainable.
There are constructive evaluations, although the damaging ones are extra detailed and particular. Berry’s report concludes: ‘For anybody contemplating becoming a member of this service, warning is suggested.’
After his most high-profile Cheltenham and Aintree but, Heneghan will most likely not be involved by such an evaluation. His Instagram account suggests he’s getting ready for Eire’s Punchestown Pageant. After Aintree, he headed to a meet in Rotterdam, from the place a submit from him said ‘three out of 4 horses right this moment’ – implying winners. The Instagram submit’s soundtrack was a tune referred to as Chase the Solar.
