Betting Exchange Legal Question

Betfairs odds change because people are taking both sides of a bet. I'll go out on a limb here and say that you won't have the customer base BF does, so people will take your odds without the other side being matched. Someone might bet a horse big at 5.0, are you sure you will get a layer @ 5.1 ?

You'd be on the hook big time You can't always cover your bets because BF odds move too fast.

Plus operating and start up costs would be enormous. Nice try though.

£1M to have the servers hosted, duplicate throighout the world....................

SS, I won't care about balancing my book

I'll be happy to lay 25% shots at 5.0

Won't bother me if I can't back it at 5.1

20% shots*

WELL THERES NOTHING TO STOP YOU, BUT THE FACT IS BETFAIR HAVE 2 MILLION CUSTOMERS AND IF THEY GET A FIVER A WEEK FROM EACH THEY RAKE 10 MILLION

a bit like walking into a bar, and miis world is there wanting a fk, betfair have 10 million and you have 30 quid, who is she going to choose?

This is already happening in practice.

Where Baz?

Daq are similar in my opinion.

Their other site ending in Mate does 2 & 3 %. I was wondering whether you were jokingly referring to it.

how does the firm begiinning with w keep going?

Stranger than the 'Bermuda triangle' phenomenon that one. Large investment and not happy to close for a loss yet?

Yeah Baz I know they are at it, but what about audits?

It's legally a very dubious practise

Firms populating their own exchanges will make errors in doing so that cost money, wrongly programmed bots etc. Not inc Betfair, none of the others are set up to make a trading profit or even come out flat so therefore must pay set up and fixed costs from commission generated. It doesn't take a lot of working out that it's a massive struggle.

Baz, shutting down winning accounts would help reduce costs

Anyway my question is is it legal to put my own money into markets on my own betting exchange?

You would need a bookmakers licence to run an exchange, if you have that you can do what you like with it providing you don't breach your own T&Cs.

The notion of an exchange is a bit of a fiction, when you strike a bet on betfair you aren't really betting against another customer- your bet is taken by Betfair (acting as a bookmaker), betfair simultaneously takes another bet from another customer which opposes yours- but both bets are struck between the customes and betfair. That's why betfair is legal, it's also why layers here are not unlicensed layers- they are in fact backing a regular bet against a bookie.