Betfair Forum Q&A Session Tuesday 13th July, 18:00

Hi Betfair
Do you have plans to introduce each-way multiple betting, with or without Fred Done-style bonuses?
If not, why not?

We do plan to introduce each way multiple at some point in the future, which would be an extension of our win SP multiples product.

We offer a variety of bonuses and incentives to play on multiples form time to time. These are often sent to customers via email and can also be found under our Promo tab.

Question From Marcus:
firstly these live chats that you do should be held more often, maybe 3 times a year.
secondly, there is always alot of talk on the horse racing forum about the picture delays on ATR and RUK . in the last live chat you did say something about neither channels taking you up on your offer to provide assistance to speeding up the delay in live pictures. can you clarify why they refused your invitation, why the picture delay is so long, who is responsible for the delays, how it could be speeded up and who the general public should complain  to , to try and resolve this problem , to get faster pictures. if we all know the problems then we can all complain and put pressure on to the relevant companies to try to speed up the delay.  i believe a few years ago there was a channel called ATR EXTRA which had faster pictures, so it is possible.
Question from Dave:
Are Betfair in any way able to influence speed of pictures as the track players are killing the in running markets at most SiS tracks. The in-running liquidity is noticeably down at certain tracks where a minority of your customers are paying the tracks to gain a significant advantage.
I know of many "casual" punters who now will simply not get involved with the in-running at SiS tracks because of the current situation and therefore the growth of your horse racing product is very retricted until something changes.
I’m afraid these are questions that we've been asked many times and, unfortunately, the response this time is no different and no more positive than those we were able to offer in the past. We have spoken, at length, to the two UK racing channels and encouraged them to explore ways to reduce the signal delay. Both are limited in what they can do because of their relationships with Sky and for them the issue of how quickly and consistently the signal is delivered is simply not a priority.
If it were simply a matter of money then the latency problems would have been resolved by now. It is not. There are a number of technical issues that make real time picture delivery for every customer watching in every country Betfair operates in, simply impossible.
Customers who post on the forum tend to be UK based and view events from a very UK-centric view but there are also many people betting on UK racing around the world and they often see TV pictures that are even more delayed than in the UK. Those we have spoken to are aware of this and choose to bet anyway believing that their race reading skills compensate for any picture delay, or are happy to leave bets up in-running, as insurance against bets placed before the off.
Each broadcaster has a different way of making their signal available to viewers but even if they were both to agree to operate in the same way, customers would still see pictures at differing times. It is an inevitable consequence of different delivery systems that those people watching via cable, satellite, online or elsewhere will all see signals at differing times.
Those people who choose to watch a live event and hoping to taking advantage of beating any picture delay are hindered by the connectivity of their internet connections which can be slower on course than elsewhere. There are now so many people utilising what they think are faster picture service providers that the playing field for in-running betters is probably more level than it has ever been.
As well as Betfair informing customers of possible delays in 'live' pictures, in both the market information text and at the point of bet placement, some broadcasters themselves now commonly tell viewers to be mindful when betting in-running that what they are watching can sometimes be a couple of seconds or so behind real time.
If anyone has a suggestion as to how to circumvent the various technical issues to help overcome the variance in service I am sure the broadcasters would be delighted to hear from you or you could let us know and we'll take it up directly with them.

With regards to the live chats, we will be running these every 3 months going forward.

hi betfair,

could you please tell me when you are showing the results from the world cup 100,000 giveaway competition, the last thing I saw was on sunday when you showed positions with no percentages, then nothing since.

thanks


The final leaderboard for the £100,000 Giveaway will be updated tomorrow (we had some technical issues with the site, so apologies for the delay).

Dear Betfair, does your company have any plans to ban bots using your site as quite frankly they are nothing more than a fly in the ointment for 95% of Betfair punters?

Hi, at present we have no such plans.

1 . Since the trial of the Cross Matching on the horse racing markets we have not heard anything more on the subject. Could you please update us. Will you be introducing it and if so when? Was the trial not a success and hence why we have not seen it return?

2. On the US racing markets there are often several meetings missing each evening in particular meetings that are being shown on ATR, instead you often have meetings not being shown on ATR. Why is this? Can these extra meetings not be added, ideally could you not just put markets up for all of the meetings that are on each evening? Or speak to ATR and ask what meetings they will be covering?
3.Why can the US racing live video not be in Flash and are there any plans to introduce it in Flash? The current format is so delayed it is no use for trading up to the off as you have no idea how for behind it is.

1)    The trial of cross matching on inplay racing markets went well. We hope to introduce this soon, although this requires some IT development work first. We’ll let you know when we have more accurate information on a start date. 
2)    We choose to only cover a certain number of US fixtures each night, as experience has shown that it clutters the left hand menu and dilutes liquidity, leaving customers with a poorer product overall. We tend to focus on the meetings that are on ATR and those tracks where we also offer live streaming and US tote pool access.
3)    We are aware of this and, cost permitting, would like to move to Flash streaming at some point. The Betfair Racing product team are looking at this.

Is there any update regarding getting faster pictures for betting in running? If not, is increasing technology for those betting live at the venue a concern for you regarding liquidity/and or fairness?

As regards faster tv pictures we have answered this in full in a question above.

WIth reference to concerns about liquidity there is no evidence to suggest any decline in the popularity of in running betting.
As regards to fairness of our in running markets we take all reasonable measures to make our customers aware of any possible picture delays. We believe the continued popularity of these is evidence that our customers bet with confidence and in full knowledge of such delays.

why cant i cancel keep bets when the race has finished and its suspended ?
i can cancel keep bets in running why not when you suspens the race

the following message appears
Bets on Starting Price markets cannot be cancelled until the Starting Price has been determined.

yet the starting price has been determined

its a nuisance as when there is a foto finish and its obvious whats won the lay bets cant be cancelled until you reopen the market for the foto and people with the fastest api connection clean up i have lost a few quids because of this

looking forward to your reply
james

Hi,
Thanks for your question, apologies we missed it last time. Firstly thanks for raising the issue with us. It is a known problem and is certainly something that we are trying to work on. Unfortunately, because of competing priorities we are not able to commit to a date of when this work will be completed at present but rest assured we are working on it and will implement any improvement we can as soon as possible.
Thanks
The Betfair Team

Morning Betfair,
Please clarify what happened to the £2000 Betfair Mega Minute prize for the World Cup Final. As it was 0-0, nobody won.
Suggestion - roll it over to the Open Golf championship? (Maybe ask punters to predict the winning 72 hole score, if they invest £10 during the championship).
As a general point, I've been disappointed in the standard of Customer Services over the last 3 months, and hope things get better before they get worse.

Hi,
Thanks for the question, the mega minute has been settled already as per the terms and conditions of the offer.
http://promo.betfair.com/worldcupgiveaway/tcsuk.html#promo2
4. If no customer selects the correct first goal minute after the World Cup Final on 11th July 2010, the prize fund for that match (including any amount rolled over) will be won by the customer(s) whose selection is after the actual time of the first goal but closest to the time of the first goal minute. If the game finishes 0-0 or the first goal in the final is scored in injury or extra time, we will pick the winner by selecting randomly from all customers who participated in the promotion for that particular game.
With regards to your comments on customer service, we are very sorry to hear that, we are always striving to improve our service and can only apologise that you have been disappointed. If you have any specific areas that you would like to raise, I will happily look into these for you.
Thanks

I know you dont like answering hyperthetical questions, but, in overall terms, if the Levy and/or Exchequer, increase the charges you currently pay to them, would you consider going offshore? If not, how will this be passed on to your customer base?

Specifically, will you increase the Premium charge or the base commission rates or some other method?

We believe that the recently announced Levy Board consultation exercise in relation to whether some exchange customers are betting 'in business' is both discriminatory and unnecessary. Every independent consideration of the subject since 2003 has concluded that there is no justification for singling out exchange customers in this respect and there is no evidence that exchange customers, by virtue of their use of exchanges in isolation, are betting 'in business'.  We don't expect this review to achieve what interests adverse to betting exchanges have failed to achieve since 2003, so we agree that your question is probably hypothetical!

In relation to passing on any increase in Betfair's tax/levy liabilities, it is probably worth pointing out that the current consultation exercise relates specifically to exchange customers (unlike previous reviews which generally focussed on both customers and exchange operators), so should there be an attempt to impose new charges, it would seem that these will be aimed directly at an undefined class of exchange customers and not to Betfair itself. Betfair's position remains however that the exercise is unnecessary and discriminatory.

hello betfair, are there any plans to allow in running betting on US horse racing?

We do offer in running betting on the major US race meetings such as the Breeders Cup. However, there are no immediate plans to roll this out to all US race meetings.

With our acquisition of TVG in January 2009, we have more options available to us in this regard and we will continue to review the viability and practicality of this offering.

Are there any plans for a new procedure when dealing with matches that you have lost the feed for?

At the moment you suspend the game a minute or so before kick off and we sometimes get an announcement later that it will be opened again at HT. Anybody with positions open is stuffed.

The impression I get is that you know the game won't be going in play but leave the SUSPEND until the last minute to encourage betting. It may well be that you are hoping the feed will come back but if that's the case why not just be honest and tell us so we've got an option of staying in or closing positions rather than trying to hide it?

Turning the match from a managed to an un-managed market when you realise the feed is at risk is apparantly not an option?

There have been suggestions that you could operate a symbol like the 'in-play' symbol which goes green at the start of a game. Why not have another one which goes red if you do not have a feed at a predefined time?

Basically, there has to be a better system in place for dealing with these frequent losses because at the moment it's a case of the market getting suspended, positions stuck and sometimes an announcement.

If feeds are lost in advance we will make every effort to acquire a replacement to ensure uninterrupted coverage.  In most cases, this happens minutes before the game leaving an extremely short time frame to communicate the change.  Your suggestion of turning the game from ‘managed’ to ‘unmanaged’ is an interesting one which we will look into.  However, we would need to ensure that all customers betting on the market across a variety of platforms have been clearly alerted to the change.
Thanks for the feedback.  All has been passed onto the Football team; we will update you in due course.

If you've already got your betting profit and loss, you can't refresh by hitting the button.  You have to hit it on the menu and then use the button.

Have you any plans to fix it so you can refresh simply by hitting the button?

Thanks
DW
Thanks for the feedback. This wasn’t something that we were aware of and hadn’t previously had any customer feedback about this. At present I am afraid that this is not a planned development to the my account page, in order to refresh the profit and loss part you can click “Get P&L” at the top and it will refresh your page from there.

Thanks

Dear Betfair,
 
Could I draw your attention to a thread in General Betting - 'Bots betting without delay on world cup markets?' (http://community.betfair.com/general_betting/go/thread/view/94082/25167197/Bots_betting_without_delay_on_world_cup_markets?pg=1)
It seems offers are appearing in markets the instant the SUSPEND sign has cleared which clearly goes against the delay we should all experience.
Is this to do with the way Betfair match Multiples?
Regards
Rocket to the FACE

Hi,
Thanks for this, we are aware of the post and are currently investigating it further, as soon as we have a more comprehensive response for you we will respond. Apologies that this isn’t instant but it requires a bit more investigation at this stage. Thank you for your patience.

Some years ago Betfair sponsored Greyhound Racing at Sittingbourne on Sunday nights, would it be possible to do something similar in the future as it seemed quite popular at the time and the sport is desperate for any boost it can get.

We anticipate that by the end of the year we will have sponsored around 7 high profile meetings and are always keen to further our commitment to the sport in this way and of course continue our voluntary contribution to the BGRF which will hopefully be in the region of 1 million pounds for this 12 month period.

As we've publicly stated previously greyhound racing would we feel greatly benefit from the introduction of a dedicated channel and we would actively support this but feel its reliant on all interested parties being involved (including contribution from the BGRF). Hopefully the initial discussions which you may or may not be aware of within the industry can make this happen sooner rather than later for the good of the sport.

Since there doesn't seem as much interest in the Q+A session (perhaps a result of fewer people prepared to use the forum after its 'update'?) Ill ask a final question.
Forgive my cynical nature, but its bourne out from the changing way betfair seems to want to squeeze money out its custom with the likes of the PC. You created a Q+A session to let people know about how you were to introduce this charge, then the next one you let out that there were changes to come that scrapped the rolling 60 week rule (which in actual fact never existed as you scrapped it before it was implemented) and now theres this one.

What bad news are you trying to let out this time?

That your account has been closed [:)]

No bad news.

We are currently answering any other questions that have been sent in but are drawing the live chat event to a close.

Hi Betfair Poker

In the last year on the q and a sessions u have ben ask if u had any plan to move to another network and u said u did not have any plans in the future. Last moth on the q and a  u said there was a big upgrade comming up soon and u where ask again if you had any plans to move to another nework , and again u said no.

So am pretty upset with yesterdays announcement. cause as i see it u have been withholding the truth for us for a hole year at least. what do u have to say about that ?

I guess u will loose a lot of players with this move, cause theres no reason to stay with betfair  on ongame cause there is a lot of others skin on this nework out there. and ur players like me could allready have an account on ongame network

So  my questions are :

Do we keep the rakeback on the new network ?

Do you plan to let players play on ur curent skin on ongame ?

If not can u enabel the sounds from the curent pokersofware to the new skin?

And last do u plan to sell your current poker sofware to another network ? if u do which one ? if u do not plan to sell the old software Why not?

Cheers

Potbeater

Hi Potbeater,

Firstly, our apologies if you feel we have lied to you. We have always had to hold a difficult position between wanting to be open about our future product plans with our customers, and the commercial sensitivities around a deal as large as this. This balance can lead to vague answers to direct questions, and in these, we have perhaps been too miss-leading. We are sorry if this has been the case and will work to be as open as we can in future.

In response to your specific questions about our upgrade:

- Players who have signed up with specific offers like yours will maintain them on the new platform
- When we upgrade, we will be turning off our old software. Splitting our player base between two different liquidity pools will lead to players struggling to find a game, and giving a bad poker experience - something we are keen to avoid. Having one cut-over point helps guard against this
- Yes, we will try to carry over as many features as possible, from product features (like sounds) to game variants (like the 6 handed tables or high stakes cash games not currently offered by our partner)
- No, there are no plans to sell our software to another partner. The software side of our poker offering is only one small part of what we have developed. Other parts include how it integrates with the rest of Betfair systems and the expertise of maintaining and developing it. These are very hard to commoditize.

Hope this helps.

Betfair Poker Team