One point made some while back is that the sports exchange model required huge investment in tech and hardware to keep up with the turnover. Those investors needed to be paid back, hence the need for casino and poker etc as extra revenue.

I'd bet a large slice of my bank that only the sports exchange is profitable and all the other 'diversifications' lose money. Not only do they lose money, they chew resources, so that needed fixes and improvements to the sports exchange simply aren't happening.

It is a fact that most diversifications, by most companies fail.

And as for the PC, I'd like to see a graph of revenue from it. I bet it has already peaked.

If you are smart enough to make money on bf, you will be smart enough to figure out the solution to the PC. The reason you don't see it discussed here, is people don't want bf to change the rules.

Another huge change BF has faced is vastly increased competition from the high street in-running.  Initially BF was the only place to go but now all the major sites are doing in-running on each live game and providing you can get on, the choice is immense.

OK, this may not apply to the horses which is a different type of in-running market, but for other slower sports, especially those that have breaks or safe periods, the in-running punter has a wealth of choice.

Forward thinking companies like Bet365 now offer a host of markets in-play and each outcome gets a price whereas on here outside the core markets there are generally no offers, or extremely poor offers.  The individual prices you may not agree with, but in total the high street collective often provide much better prices than can be found on here.

As has been pointed out, pre-match or pre-race, the high street usually beats BF anyway before you take commission and potential PC into account, certainly on favoured selections.  Throw in concessions like BOG, money back on 0-0s, a straight forward interace and there is no reason why new punters (or those who can still get on) would want to come over to BF in the first place.

So the exchange is now being battered by increasing competition both before the event and during as never before.  Little wonder BF are having to put a huge amount of resource into their site just to stand still.

Some fascinating stuff on this thread.

Sadly, this comment is probably the truest of them all:

Almost all bf's thoughtful winning players (and some losing players) cd tell them where they are going wrong. But the mentality of some of those at the top seems to be very techy and distrustful of punters, who are a bit too chancy for them.

lol

No its not. But that was my initial reaction to the prospect of paying the pc. I should have been paying the pc a while ago, but I got a generous concession from bf that delayed it for quite a while. Why I got the concession and others didn't, I have no idea.

The Vis while it is true you may getter better prices at bookmakers IF you shop around, generally the best prices are still on here.  You can back or lay on here, you can set your own prices and you can trade backwards and forwards on wafer thin margins with only one charge when the market is finalised, plus you dont have to worry that you will get shut down.  There's no comparison overall.

Interesting thread that really begs the question "How was Betfair ever going to sustain growth ? "

Not a single serious punter on here does not regret the path that the site has taken with games etc but if it were our business we would do exactly the same thing. A cafe wouldn`t serve tea and not coffee, regrettably the machine aspect of gambling is part of the product these days and Betfair was fully entitled to travel that route no matter how unpopular it was. The PC was and remains a disgrace, yet there are people who still pay it ! What does that prove ? that they are fools ? Certainly not, they realise that this remains the only true outlet for their pursuit of profit. Has the other site benefitted as it should have done...? I doubt it and the markets here will still satisfy the vast majority of small and medium size players.
The other more serious flaw in this site is the level of comm. as pointed out very well by screaming from beneaththewaves. 5% is colossal and deters any new recruits, though can just about be absorbed, but the points levels and more pertinently the disgraceful decay system (which makes the PC look fair) is a disgusting way to treat present clients and also attract new ones. To penalise customers for not betting is a deepy insulting way to do business, yet how many complain about this ? And how can we ? It has been there since day 1. Screaming gave an excellent example of how the affected punter cannot win...he may break level, but all he is doing is paying the wages and the bonuses of the BF staff. Why would he do this ? But he does ! So it is fair to sum up that the vast majority still believe that BF for bad or for worse is still their best chance despite racing odds for the horses punters want to back being virtually no different to the High St.after comm.
Betfair`s growth can only lie abroad with the US their only real hope of a major breakthrough. This country offers nothing, and the only way is down...the old punters are sadly going to the betting shop in the sky...there is not a single punter in the UK not aware of BF so there is nobody else to market to, they are all here already and the new ones coming to the game will eventually work out why they cannot win here. It`s no surprise is it ? Wasn`t it former director Mark Davies who told the world that only 1.7% of his company`s clients make it pay ?

This company took off for two reasons in my opinion and that was its ease of use and the unique ability to lay. That remains the case despite BF`s increasing isolation from their clients` mindset..the departure of Andrew Black only accelerated that process.
I have like everyone else no easy answers to Betfair`s growth problem...but it is Betfair`s problem not ours. Gamblers can only look at the bigger picture...is this still the best opportunity despite all its flaws...or do the traditional bookies offer us a better service and better terms ?

Anyone not knowing the answer to that really needs to address their punting expertise..or lack of.

"there is not a single punter in the UK not aware of BF so there is nobody else to market to"

I think if you stuck the word knowledgeable in between single and punter the first part would ring true but if you asked a Family Fortunes style question and asked 100 adults in the street to name a betting company Bill1es and L@ds would score in the 20s and 30s and Betfair would be lucky to score 5.  Most people I speak to about betting exchanges have never heard of them.

Regardless, nearly everyone has heard of Heinz baked beans but it doesn't stop them marketing like crazy and vastly outselling Branston baked beans which are vastly superior.

Feck N. Eejit
25 May 11 12:21
Joined:
10 Jan 02
| Topic/replies: 3,844 | Blogger: Feck N. Eejit's blog
What percentage of outcomes in a market are you laying on average ICS?

I typically lay one option per market, with how many options there are depending on what market I'm in. Anyway, this is moving very much away from the point of the thread, your model will result in an increase for this gambler, and I suspect I am far from unique in what I do, in fact I know I'm not. If the aim of the PC was to target traders (it wasn't, it was people winning) there are better ways of identifying traders than winnings alone. Differentials based on numbers of backs and lays, their weights and change in odds in markets would be a far better indicator of what people are doing. Gamblers are easy to identify if they want to- they don't.

You must have a very good strike rate ICS.

Hi Feck..hope all is good with you. Maybe a day`s racing this summer ? I take it it`ll be our tab though ! The old hospitality days are long gone I assume.
Good to see you still have the energy for the arguments. I`ll email you sometime soon.

Feck fest

------

christ. imagine having weekend tickets for that.

The answer is to change the commission rate from between 2% and 5% to between 0.2% and 0.5%, while retaining the discount points system to encourage user loyalty and arbers. If they did this, they could destroy traditional bookmakers.

I know the argument that lower commission rates haven't helped the other exchanges, but they've always made the mistake of not adopting an equivalent points system.

When the D a q was between 2% and 3% commission, you needed so many points to get to 2.75% that there was no incentive even to try. You knew that there was no need to stay loyal or arb to retain the 3% level, yet no possibility of improving the rate. So liquidity never improved.

So the D a q gave up and pointlessly copied Betfair's commission rates.

Reducing the commission rate is a no brainer and by that I mean its a no brainer not to reduce it.  They are already the market leader on price

If they do become a growth region, Betfair won't get much of the pie.

BF's site technology is built such that it can be rebranded, and this allows them to become a technology provider. Which may well be their future outside the UK.

This is the standard business model outside companies that are naturally global such as Google and Microsoft.

CLYDEBANK29

"Reducing the commission rate is a no brainer and by that I mean its a no brainer not to reduce it.  They are already the market leader on price"

You keep saying this Clydebank but it is certainly not true for my sport (both codes of rugby) where match odds on the fav are rarely a good deal and the nature of handicapping markets offered by the books means BF struggles to compete as both sides of the market can be better on the high street.

OK, that is a small sport betting wise, but I also dabble a bit these days with horses and see examples in every race where early prices on single figure horses are at least matched online and in many cases by BOG, so it's a no brainer where to bet.

Overall, I use the traditional bookies these days more than I have done in years.  You make very valid points about what else this site offers with respect to laying, trading price movements and so on.  But then we already know that on here and are not the ones BF needs to attract.

The untapped market has the likes of Ray Winstone in their face at HT, saying come along, look at the 100 markets we are offering during the game - we'll even give you up to £200 bonus if you join us........and of those that do, 365 can easily weed out those they don't want to keep whilst stringing along the promising accounts with a few more little loss leaders along the way.   Meanwhile BF has some bloke in a pub drinking milk.

Betfair is beginning to remind me of Sage the software accounting company. They too screwed every penny out of their customers and finally the customer has woken-up.

Leicester 4/6 PP 1.66 here, cap backers have -2 or +4 to chose from on the high street whereas the BF line sits right in the middle at -2.5
Leinster 1.73 with 5 or 6, 1.71 here.  The -2 Leinster cap at evens almost certain to beat any -2.5 offers on here.
Warrington 1.55 with Sportingbet is at least equal to the current market on here.
Live S15 games tomorrow - Stormers 1.36 Hills, Sharks 1.57 Fred and Bulls 1.30 SJ I think will all beat the BF line.  The only game where fav will be a better price than the high street is the Highlanders.

NRL doesn't compare like with like as UK books contain the draw whereas on here the match odds include golden point overtime.  Given the lack of 80 min draws in that league I suspect a backer would be better off taking the inflated UK prices that result of them settling on 80 mins.

good post clydebank.

plus, if you put up an offer rather than take a price, you will generally get matched at least a tick higher.

It's an ongoing whine in "Site Feedback" but it can take up to four minutes to log into this site these days, then you've got to stumble across a market, which isn't the easiest thing to do anymore.

It's one thing to diversify the product, but you can't do it at the expense of your core business. Endlessly whirling clocks that don't do anything and error messages are not the best way to get new customers.

So that then makes it doubly difficult then (and I tend to agree the masses on the whole are not price sensitive).

1. If they are not price sensitive, no reason to go to BF.
2. If they do become price sensitive, first port of call is open accounts with other bookies.
3. If they then get a feel for it and become more sophisticated they may well stumble into an account on BF.

In terms of new business then, BF is well down the pecking order.