Birmingham City part-owner Tom Brady confirms that his dog is a clone | OneFootball

The Birmingham City part-owner Tom Brady has confirmed that his pet dog Junie is a clone of one that his formerly owned.

Birmingham City part-owner Tom Brady has said that his dog is a clone of one that his family used to own.

Birmingham City's highest-profile backer, former NFL quarterback Tom Brady, has surprised the internet by confirming that his dog is a clone of one that his family used to own. Brady is a co-owner of the Blues, having joined the club's ownership group in 2024.

Brady had a stellar career in the NFL, winning the Superbowl seven times; six times with the New England Patriots and once with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His playing career made him a lot of money, and he is now estimated to have a net worth of $300 million, or £230 million.

This has given him the financial wherewithal to be able to spend thousands of dollars on this extremely expensive - and not uncontroversial - service.

Brady has dog cloned by business in which he is an investor

Goal report that Brady's dog Junie is a clone of a deceased family pet, Lua, who died in 2023. They report that this work was carried out by Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based biotechnology firm in which he is an investor. Brady made the announcement on the same day that Colossal Biosciences acquired another animal cloning company, Viagen Pets and Equine.

In a statement issued by Colossal Biosciences obtained by People magazine, Brady said: “I love my animals. They mean the world to me and my family. A few years ago, I worked with Colossal and leveraged their non-invasive cloning technology through a simple blood draw of our family's elderly dog before she passed.”

Brady went on to explain that this “gave my family a second chance with a clone of our beloved dog,” and that he is “excited how Colossal and Viagen's tech together can help both families losing their beloved pets while helping to save endangered species.”

Brady's shareholding in Birmingham City is only 3.3%

The cloning of animals hasn't been without controversy over the years. The first cloned dog, Snuppy, was born in 2005 in South Korea. The dog lived to ten years of age. The owner of Britain's first cloned dog, born in 2014, is now onto the third generation of her pup.

It is not an inexpensive process, with the Viagen website confirming the cost of carrying it out at $50,000 (£38,300), to be paid in two equal instalments. Considering Brady's net worth, though, this is relative loose change in comparison with his overall wealth.

Brady's involvement with Birmingham City hasn't been without its controversy, either. His series Built in Birmingham, a documentary series covering their 2024-25 season in the same vein as Welcome to Wrexham, was reviewed in the summer by the Independent's Miguel Delaney, who described it as "a dumbing down of the League One season", adding that, "there are plenty of good reasons to support Birmingham, but this show isn’t one of them."

The Athletic reported in May 2024 that Brady's shareholding in the Blues isn't very big. He holds 333 Class 'B' shares in Birmingham City, which amounts to just a 3.3% stake in the club. But football finance expert Kieran Maguire explained at the time that the size of the shareholding wasn't really the point: "It reinforces the view that Tom Brady’s involvement is that of influencer and celebrity endorsement, which we all thought anyway, rather than a financial investor."

It may well be that this statement regarding the cloning of his dog comes from a similar place to his involvement in Birmingham City. It remains to be seen, whether Birmingham City can repeat the sort of success that it's hoped his reach will bring.