The new premium charge and long term winners.

Its not in punters interests for betting on here to end up as a derivative of the casino which seems to be where it is heading at the moment; though it clearly would be in to BF's advantage for this to happen.

If theres a chain reaction with other companies taking a similar stance it could be the end of betting as we know it and no realistic prospect of any long term winning strategy surely.

Has it occurred to anyone that the hmrc are looking into this area with great interest

Betfair now have a way of providing data on long term winners/full timers

This PC could be the tip of the iceberg

Who is likely to pay the new premium charge?

Surely not straight out punters who bet on events prior to the start in good liquitity markets and dont trade out E.g. football matches and English horse racing.  If you were successfull enough on this type of event to pay the tax you'd surely do your betting at the other exchange.

Layers dont look likely to be too vunerable if they layed only the bets of the punters talked about above, surely they could use the purple place too.

Anybody laying in events other than football matches, golf tournaments, tennis matches, or British horse racing before the off may find the pickings very thin on the purple place and be forced to stay with Betfair.

Same goes for the punters on these events theye'd have to stay with Betfair because of they low liquidity levels on these bets on the other exchange. i don't think you could turn to the bookmkers! Its my belief theye'd have long told you to Feck off before you'd won anything like £250,000 with them.

In play...I believe this is where a lot of both punters and layers will be hit with little possibility of being matched in running on the other low liquidity exchange in many sports.

I have read about another category of punters on here who make a profit from the quirks in the exchange possibily using models invented to gain a profit on the stock exchange by accuretly  reacting to the flow of money being processed in order to gain a profit. I get a hunch that many of these maybe adversly affected, if a small percentage profit can be gained by this method E.g. Say you found an industrial process which you turn one element into another element but as consequence of this manufacturing process you produced a by-product, which you could sell, surely as long as the process continues you'd continue to gain the vluable by-product I.e. in Betfairs case an almost guaranteed profit for these people.

Its an odd curiosity of human behavior that Betfair is almost certainly giving a worse deal to its customers than the Purple place but will people move over their on mass I think its highly unlikely. Why don't people simply move when their getting obviously less for what could become the same product? I dont know! maybe it would make a good sociology study about the pack like behavior of our species.

The exchange will suggest  because it only concerns long term winners with Betfair and almost everybody loses anyway its almost errelevnt,  but thats like saying almost nobody wins the lottery so weve decided to scrap the prize, just keep buying the lottery, no no it doesn't matter about the jackpot because almost nobody wins anyway, theyed reason.

but the question must be for the punter if you can't win what's the point of Befair?

If people won't change their betting habits yes they probably will have to stay, it depends how hard they want to work at it doesnt it really at the end of the day.

I think in betting you hear the successful people say you are always having to raise your game and adapt so suppose the people who have been one trick ponies for so long have done well out of it until now.

Time to start adding a few other strings to those bows or pay the penalty!!

You often hear for example "traders have to do this or traders have to do that" but you need other angles to fall back on surely, this is what I've been trying to master over the last few years and think I am in a position where I can bob and weave a bit, albeit for much lesser sums than some have made in their time on here.

no moves Joined: 24 Feb 04
Replies: 1110 02 Jul 11 00:31 
Who is likely to pay the new premium charge?



but the question must be for the punter if you can't win what's the point of Befair?


Betfair has figured out that the average punter (and we're talking about 500,000-odd users, apparently ) doesn't think that way. The average punter only thinks: "Will this bet win, right now?". And if the bet wins, the average punter happily accepts his winnings, less 5% or so, and moves on to his next bet. A decade of forum posts has illustrated that fact in the clearest possible way.

And the PC charge, right from day one, has been designed to allow those punters to lose their cash less slowly than they previously did, thus generating far greater overall commissions than any PC will generate. At 20%, it wasn't effective enough in doing so, hence the latest hike. Betfair saying "almost everybody loses" is not irrelevant; it's fundamental to the PC debate. Betfair will gain far more from losers losing more slowly (as an indirect result of the PC) than they will ever glean from PC charges on a limited number of individuals.

And to say that you now can't possibly win on BF is just plain wrong.
After all the PC is a % of gross profit, which itself is just wins minus losses without any charges.
If you have a winning strategy you will still win, only you will win less profutability wise, not even necessarily less absolutely, if you can scale up.

Betfair "winners welcome"....

365*

Wee Mac
I don't think the founders of BF had the slighest idea how the exchange would develop into a money making machine for a small core of shrewdies.
Iy is simply unsustainable in its current form.

FAFH, in 1999 I think it was, when I first read of an online facility which would allow me to lay prices to others, I quite literally jumped out of my chair; it was one of those 'JFK' moments. I would almost certainly have sat down again pretty sharpish had I realised that I would end up outside this elite cabal of money-making machines subject to PC. So no, to my shame, I didn't see it coming either.

That said, I wouldn't at all say the current situation is unsustainable - it's just far more profitable for BF to do what they've done.

Well I think it's probably unsustainable.
I mean where does the greed of these winners end.
Some of them are literally making returns on capial in the tens of thousands percent pa.
That's totally unreal.
Never in the history of finance have such money making opportunities lasted very long.
Many of these guys just operate out of their homes.
And apparently they're not even exposing themselves to any real risk of losing.
Totally unsustainable, if you expect the mass of losing punters to continue to fund them day in day out.

You clearly havent got a clue what you're talking about mr frog and your last post is just total nonsense

Bluenose
I used to argue myself till I had a blue face challenging the results put up by cetain posters.
Then I accepted eventually that they were not all false claims of success.
Do you know otherwise ?

Spot on Wee Mac.

NAIL ON THE HEAD.

It's not about BF getting a bigger slice of the pie, it's about getting the average losing punters hanging around longer for the benefit of all net winners.

Muddy waters indeed Wee Mac.

Betfair is a business , not some sort of betting utopia.

At least some on this thread understand the position.

It is a Plc and needs to GROW its bottom line. It appears to me that its basic business model can only take the business so far. The exchange has reached saturation point and whilst profits can still be genearated it's struggling to increse these to the next level.Once profits stagnate the share price, which is derived from future profit expectations, will suffer.

What are the options?

Encourage non profitable customers to leave or change their behaviour.

Increse our prices to the users that need our services the most - It's basic business economics.

Move closer to a business model whereby, long term , our customers lose more of their money to us rather than to other users.


The PC achieves all of these.

Lori, they can raise their basic rates of commission e.g. to get a greater share of arbers' 'wallets', as their terminology has it, and to squeeze more cash out of recreational players'.

They can improve their mobile offering to catch a new generation of bettors with the best spot prices.

The new pc is about driving out winners who provide nothing to the exchange in terms of guaranteeing across-the-board prices.

Lori, they wd argue that their super-winners aren't 'persons'. They are closer to small companies squatting on bf's platform and making more than they're worth in terms of the prices they provide.

If bf have to deal w/ companies providing liquidity, the line will be at least let them deal w/ real ones w/ whom they can draw up service agreements.

My feeling w/ IR betting is that bf has a niche as a wholesale player, while the High St can offer a viable retail product. You see Ray Winstone's lemon face on tv all the time saying 'in-play betting from bet 3.65'. You don't see bf advertising, 'almost always better in-play odds with us' though that's almost always true. This can only be because bet 3.65 are a fantastic client of bf's IR offering.

What you say about the American books' IR offering is interesting and may be right. Someone like me is betting significant amounts as an individual bookie client but hasn't even got accnts. w/ the two books you mention--nor w/ anyone who doesn't do horses.

(In fact, I am almost immediately closed down by Australian operators offering European horse prices b/c I can pick them off, sometimes b/c they are behind bf).