In the last 7 years, what has Betfair done good, what products or services or

Nothing springs to mind for me but I'm sure over the last 7 years they must have done something well and I just cant remember.  I remember the Sporting Options customer rescue which was in 2004 I believe but can't recall anything since then.

live video was good....now it sh!t for me , and look at other places....most of the new things betfair brings in, I never used

You may well be right Clydebank.
But let me turn the question slightly on its head.
Would they in fact have been better advised to do nothing else except to refine and perfect the delivery of the basic exchange concept as it pertains to sports betting alone ?
With the basic premise perhaps being to try to make it as fair and equitable to all end users, those botted up and those not.

"--as fair and equitable as technically possible to all end users,--- "

Virtual Racing for me...I couldnt bet on it but I just liked to watch

and they got rid of it

1 live video
2 the original may madness promo, and more specifically the free laptop they sent me at the end of it.

keep bets have been a major breakthrough

Keep bets is what springs to my mind too.
  It's been a disgrace though that they weren't cancelled when there was an outage.  They have now finally decided to also cancel keep bets if there's an outage. Only took them a couple of years to come to their senses [smiley:crazy]

oh, yeah. okay then:

3 keep bets
4 banned alex [;)]

Keep bets, live video, pc2 and pictures on the forum

oh and betfair community manager 2 is a good investment also

API

I think My markets was added in 2004.

The aussie bug was added in 2005 or 2006 and they've been "aware of the problem" ever since.

I didn't think Taikai was the worst idea, although it was so horribly promoted that it never stood a chance.

Some will likely say the "new" interface (circa 2006?) with the bigger boxes and some other changes was better. Personally I used the old one as long as they allowed access to it.

The only good thing to ever come out of betfair towers was the cross matcher.

Feck you seemed to be happy with PC1 too ?

My markets was a good move but like you say Lori it seems ages ago.

The way they fought off the Aussie state bookies springs to mind now which I think was around 2006/07.

I was never happy with PC1 Eddie. In fact I was about the only big winner that made a stand against it (mainly because of the 60 week rule). It introduced additional complexity, only partially eroded the parasites and cheats most privileged status (while turning them into bad publicity machines), left many liquidity providing customers stressed out and introduced a deterrent to new custom. My position was and always has been that betfair should rid themselves of parasites and cheats.

API was what made betfair...Im never been a big user of API, but with out it, betfair would never got to it size

The amount of time it takes to put races in play has greatly improved - there was a time when they were approaching halfway in a 5f sprint before it reopened.

oh, hey, another one - firefox extras.

took years of nagging before they got someone to do the huge amount of work it must have taken for "keep bets", autorefresh was good, oh no sorry that was gruss.

For me best thing was introduction of the "block user" button on forum.

cheers Betfair.




Worst thing are these feckin smilies. Come on own up, which reprobate thought they were the best available?

[:D]

More markets and in-play football has been very good, although putting things like Turkish league one reserves in play is a bit ott. They should scrap the unmanaged in play markets imo, as hapless customers getting caught out will lead to a lesser share of wallet for Betfair.

Apart from minor tweaks and additional markets, the site seems very similar to the way it was in 2006 when I became a customer. In fairness that's not such a bad thing, as long as everything is stable. If I want a better platform, I'll have to design it myself outside the web browser and in a proper program.

I'm not a techie at all.
But do all these pretty graphics take up too much techical resources ?
And if so, are they adding anything really ?

The graphics are a massive pain FAFH, even though it does look a lot nicer.

You look at the Match page for a football match that lists a bunch of markets. It used to be a neat, compact list.

The page takes longer to load and there are big spaces between the selections, meaning fewer selections visible on screen and more scrolling.

The only graphics I need are the graphs. In fact I turn most of the graphics/ banners / arcade ads off using adblock and element hiding helper in firefox (unfortunately this doesn't stop them loading and taking up bandwith, it just makes them invisible).

If Betfair started tinkering with the layout of the correct score market to make it look nice that really would be a nuisance as it just about fits on my screen without scrolling when I get rid of the image bar at the top.

keep bets.

I maybe a purist or idealist but I liked BF when the site was basic and they were getting thousands of new customers each week because they were seen to be fair/competitive and word of mouth was all they needed. Instead of rejigging the commission structure to make it fairer to all they prostituted themselves to try and take over the world. Ultimately the site is now a high tech mess covering most bases but ultimately poles apart from the value site it originated from.

Sadly BF 2004 > BF 2011 for me - obviously not in terms of company value but had the company gone on the right lines and not tried to conquer the world I think they'd be in a better position now.

I wonder whether their change of direction and loss of punter focus date back to when Softbank bought a stake back in 2006?  Not sure what Softbank paid for it's stake then but sure it was a lot more than the company is worth now.

According to The Register Softbank bought 23% of BF @ £13/share.

So paid about twice the current share price, so spent about half the current market cap.

for me is the number of markets but they still dont have as much as 36 5 so there is room.

I also that the liquidity is better than 7 years ago but in the last time i have the feeling liquidity is going down i dont its just a feeling

CLYDEBANK29 if I remember correctly, Softbank's stake in Betfair implied a value of £1.5B

bsp?

the liquidity looks like its going down because there are FAR TOO MANY new markets.  Cut womens, youth and reserve football.  get rid off unmanaged inplay football. 

And this is only a start.  I'd go as far as have no betting on blue sqaure prem, north and south, county championship cricket and doubles/mixed doubles tennis.

oh, another one. the android app's now pretty decent.

Agree with TTS, although blue square prem is fine when it is the only thing that's on. Scrap it when there is decent football.

I do like the increase in number of markets for each match though. team to win both halves, team total goals stuff like that.

to be fair BFSP and horse racing multiples aren't bad enhancement for small stakers/casual bets @ big festivals

Taikai!!!

Can't speak for the past but if they could create an updated betfair lite, I'd be happy.

I still think they could trim the space on the platform to make it more useable for the user.