BF is not the biggest European online bet exchange

I remember him saying that nobody in the UK makes a consistent profit on Betfair. Since then I just ignore him as he clearly has an agenda that we probably shouldn't ask about as it might be trying to help us.

Lori , very good point. I suppose his job is to get the decision makers to love rather than hate Betfair. Ive looked at the sport betting website of the company he mentioned and i dont see a betting exchange.

What was the company?

Mans... used to have an exchange and that was pretty big, but they closed it a couple years ago.

b w in

Ok cheers, I haven't heard of them having an exchange.... doesn't mean I'm right of course.

They mention that they have 110 bookmakers so im wondering if they produce a best price market. That would hardly be what we or anyone else thats knows anything calls a betting exchange but as you say it might be a choice of word used for good reason.

Perhaps he meant on continental Europe ie. excl UK ?

No he said they are bigger than us in Europe but we are biggest if everywhere on planet is included.

lori, do you have any idea why they closed down the exchange?

mans closed because the only people seeding were themselves, and they did it in too big volume. 20,000 up at early prices on asian handicaps where none of the asian books themselves would do that, because there's too many people out there who could pick those lines off too easily.

I'd say they found it unprofitable and weren't prepared to continue to loss lead to get sufficient liquidity. Shame they didn't hang around until PC introduction, more might have tried it.

trouble is to rival BF you need:

an IR platform that is at least as good

liquidity for static markets.

wherever asian books would hedge bets or indian books would hedge cricket markets would be quite a lot bigger than the pie in the sky trading figures on such events on here, since the majority of the money matched on test matches for example is by traders IMO.

don't think there'd be much to rival the horse racing product though.

Here's the link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rqpq4/The_Bottom_Line_Series_4_Episode_8/

cheers treble

He didn't say betfair were bigger than God. What he actually said was that Betfair were bigger than Rod BUT Rod has not been big for around 10 years (imo).

When Mark Davies stated Betfair was a bookmaker the interviewer commented "but you're a bookmaker with a difference". "Yes" said Mark "we're a stock exchange for bets". Why do betfair think this is a selling point? Almost everything negative about the site (overcomplex interface, commission scheme and pc) is a result of accomodating trading parasites who contribute practically nothing in terms of real liquidity. If betfair were selling insurance they'd probably advertise that a free 20 page booklet of small print came with every policy.

http://markxdavies.blogspot.com/

The Bottom Line went out over the weekend. I ended up recording it for Betfair because David Yu was ill and couldn't make it. The programme covered regulation and competition, and had the Chief Executive of Wimpey and the European head of Diageo as guests.

Other than me somehow contriving to describe Bwin as a betting exchange rather than a betting company, the programme is interesting for me to see how they edited it, from the point of view that they have cut out anything that they consider to be advertising for your company. With so much that is positive to say about Betfair and the extent to which it offers something ground-breaking for the consumer, that means they need to take out quite a lot! They recorded an hour, and the programme lasts less than half of that.

One line which I am interested to see that they cut was that I described Betfair as the natural successor to Virgin in the 1980s and Dyson in the 1990s, given that it is the most successful, ground-breaking British company of the 2000s. They've literally lifted that line and left in the two either side of it, 19 minutes and 56 seconds in!

He admits he made a mistake calling them an exchange which is just getting a word wrong. But how can he be asked who is your biggest competitor and have b w in in his mind ? He might as well have said Cadburys because they are into exchange betting as much as b w in as far as i can see.

Betfair don't have a serious competitor as far as betting exchanges go (betfair do their very best to de-emphasize this)
Bwin is Europe's biggest online betting site, so they see them as their main competitor, as a lot of the (mostly older) people that go to betting shops don't use the internet to bet, but obviously all of bwin's customers do.

Of course the correct answer to who is your biggest competitor is " as a betting exchange we havent got one " which would have raised eyebrows.

Lori says on 2nd post that he ignores anything he says as he could be trying to help us. Its a complex mix but you have to wonder whether Betfairs monopoly combined with the lack of knowledge even in the racing world about the financial realities of both Betfairs operation and the customers themselves is good for us even if its almost certainly good for Betfair.

Numbers can be deceptive -- Bwin has almost one million account holders but 900,000 of them belong to racingguru's mate, the pro squash punter.

It would have been nice to hear the reply to the comparison with Dyson " Yes but they dont hoover extra money from your account every Wednesday Mr. Davies "

They hoover money from people's accounts after every winning bet howard. Why would the interviewer highlight the 'plight' of those people who pay the lowest percentage of their winnings out of all of betfair's winners?

Feck by my "jioke " what i meant to highlight was the interviewers almost total lack of knowledge about online betting and Betfair in particular. What would have been interesting is if when being told b w in is Betfairs biggest competitor the interviewer had replied that one b w in isnt a betting exchange and two you have an effective monopoly worldwide as no other exchange does more than a tiny fraction of your turnover.