Betfair plans "an integrated exchange and sportsbook combination".

They didn't learn from Mansion then.

or Gamebookers

from what I understand it will done on a "risk free" basis.

i.e. bets offered on the sportsbook will be arbed into the exchange.

theres nothing new about this, purple have the same thing called chronicle plus a few white label type deals (32 red, pkr, samvo etc).

However what I suspect will be slightly different about the betfair set up, is that it will offer up money that isnt available on the exchange as a back. In that when a bet is taken instead of back bet dissapearing, a lay bet will appear on the exchange.

However the lay bet will be pumped in at such a price the cross matching bot takes care of it.

This is why betfair think they dont layers anymore and why they had to get the cross matching bot to work before annoucing the sportsbook.

For horses it will just be cr@p like 32Red and for the rest you don't need the exchanges anyhow.

I was worried when I first saw this mentioned but if you look at their presentation it shows that they're really just talking about early markets - which is fine by me. For the time being they seem to be standing by the exchange model for near-off and in running.

Early markets for horses?? They've said many times there is no liquidity because the big layers got killed so what makes them think they can do any better?? They won't touch it or offer 115 overround books for pennies

Perhaps you're right - we'll see, but it's there in pretty clear terms in their proposals.

I'm inclined to agree with them that there's money in these markets for a sophisticated operator but I don't have either the expertise or the funds to take it on.

where bookies offer lower overround than an illiquid exchange, no reason not to have there own sportbook offering, 110+% books is my guess. They should stay away from the horses though whatever

perhaps they should change their name to b0d0g europe - no horses and **** percentage overrounds and loads of marketing bumph.

Nevison said they would run out of layers. Is he right ?

Does he think backers won't notice the 40% deduction?

It's on here page 34
http://corporate.betfair.com/investor-relations/~/media/Files/B/Betfair/pdf/fy11_analyst_presentation.pdf

They wont get picked off on early horses or other stuff because they could ban winners from the sportsbook markets, they could basically run these markets like other bookies. It's not clear if they're creating a seperate sportsbook or creating new and turning some existing markets into sportsbook markets and running them alonside the main liquid markets which will be kept as exchange markets.