stevie , it shouldn't matter whether you bet in in-running , trade manually , or straight bet , after all that is what betfair was invented to for  ( mr black had an accumulator running and thought what a good idea it would be if he could trade some of it )

More bubbly for the shareholders meeting.Nice profits announced today without significant growth so cost cutting and premium charge doing nicely thank you

unfortunately stevie , it's a business decision betfair have made to increase there profits .

gone 9pm and no update on the portal - be nice to know how much they are fleecing off you tomorrow.

Mine was £76.78.

Not a single bet on a World cup match placed on Betfair.

must admit, purple has been great for the world cup.
decent liquidity on every game.

The noticeable increase in World Cup liquidity at purple shows there is a now a gap in the Exchange Market for customers actually being and perceiving themselves as being charged too high commission and all those who pay premium charges.

The market research has been done for any new entrants and it is clear that the Exchange Model is a guaranteed highly profitable business when commission rates are between 0% and 5%.

If Betfair stick to the current high charges and Purple fail to build on the World Cup momentum, it must only be a matter of time before well backed entrepreneurs (similar to Andrew Black with Betfair) come forward with the next innovation to turn the market on its head.

When people start heading out the door in mass numbers, it is very difficult to stop the flow and nearly impossible to entice the large numbers back in.

Hopefully Betfair management listen to their customer base and smell the coffee before it is too late.

all bet are  silly elsewhere   those world cup bets  are  50-50  type of bets


want it  on here   but how   things  need to change

most, if not all betfair clients paying premium charge will get better relative odds in the high street, whilst there are some good deals to be had out there with other exchanges, which are better than betfair and the high street

cathy seldon 27 Jun 14 18:34 Joined: 27 Aug 03 | Topic/replies: 21 | Blogger: cathy seldon's blog

betfair clients paying premium charge wont get their bets on with tradition bookies because they are successful.

WALOFS

to be fair , some successful betfair punters are laying .

if you are backing and paying PC , you are not using betfair ( except in running )

Stumbled across a very interesting document on the levy board website yesterday. Shows papers from 2005 when the government were looking at taxing some Betfair customers.

http://www.hblb.org.uk/documents/87_Responses_to_HMCustoms&ExciseConsultation2002.pdf

Very interesting on page 118 where the researchers discovered 100% of punters who bet more than 50,000 individual bets win. They thought that a tax at 15% GPT on high volume/high number of bets punters would only raise £1-2m a year. Ultimately it was decided not to go through with it.

Of course many loyal Betfair users helped support Betfair's case at the time. I can see some of my data in their letters. I am certain Betfair acted in good faith at the time.

But I have a nagging feeling this research is what lead to the Premium Charge. £1-2m a year at 15% from consistent winners - whats that at 60%? Add on inplay winners that will not be making so many bets and its easy to see the Premium Charge generates a lot of cash for Betfair.

The greed and short-sightedness of the decision is unbelievable as it stopped growth in the exchange stone dead.

Its a very interesting document for those interested in the exchange. Back it 2005 the dream was global domination by Betfair rather than the current back in its shell model. It also gives an insight into how government worked at the time.

Another interesting point is how fast they were growing at the time with no advertising. Compare that with the £125m a year marketing budget now to stand still.

Although I don't agree with the premium charge, I can understand betfair's view that they are a business out to make as much money as possible and f-you to anyone who doesn't like it.
Whether the negative’s of the premium charge have outweighed the positives in terms of profit is another story.

There is not a single thing stopping people (other than being willing to stump up their own cash!) banding together to form their own company and launch their own exchange with a capped commission rate and or whatever other business model suits them. And even go as far as to run it in the same manner as John Lewis i.e. the only shareholders are the people who work there.

smarties and the quack are probably far more desperate for real liquidity providers than a new server farm and support staff.

I agree pawras. The Premium Charge is not going to be scrapped under current management. At the end of year investor thing the CEO refused to discuss pricing.

Betfair has moved on from the situation in 2005 where it had the world at its feet growing internationally with very little advertising spend. The fact that exchange revenue from grey markets has not dropped much since they pulled out shows how robust the exchange product is compared to sportsbook and casino. It is totally unique.

The choice was to remain an exchange trying to grow in grey markets and the UK while keeping marketing costs down or place all the eggs in the UK with a more recreational product.

The fact that countries are being more and more protectionist with online gambling has not helped Betfair - especially now they are no longer a private company.

I don’t necessarily agree with you. People could have said that about the Ford Motor company because they’d stole a march on everyone else by introducing production lines. Or in more recent times Microsoft originally came from nowhere and took on IBM.

If a newly formed company has the will and ideas necessary to really aggressively take on competitors to get market share I think it can be done, especially if it not listed on the stock market and ergo only answerable to a relatively small number of investors who are aware of the business plan from the outset.

For example a new exchange could :-
No more than 2.5% commission for everyone and reduce it even further than anyone else for the big backers and layers.
No premium commission for ordinary backers and layers but those with bots hitting the hardware hard every second would have to pay for doing so cos the reality is that hardware needed for it is not free by any means.
Don’t try and take them on at every front in terms of markets offered.

I’m sure plenty here could come up a suitable wish list.

If I had the dosh I’d do it just to f them over for the hell of it.

a community owned and run exchange would be the way to go, based on a not for profit business model. power to the people and all that.

we the customers are the 'entity' that funds this billion dollar industry, and yet we have zero control and get treated like mushrooms (kept in the dark and fed bullshit)

how hard to start a project like this? simple really -

1 - create membership

2 - elect steering committee

3 - create business structure based on 'not for profit'

4 - write constitution based on 'by the people for the people'

5 - start-up funding via crowdfunding

6 - build pilot exchange

7 - develop exchange to commercial standard

8 - begin commercial operation


it all comes down to a small number of people prepared to do the heavy lifting at the beginning. (oh, and a larger group to stand around doing nothing, and telling them where they are going wrong...lol)

4 years ago, as in, 2 years after the Premium Charge came in? 

There was definitely a planned collusive effort between winners to form a new exchange but it never materialised.  The bad news is that if you are a winner and weren't involved, it sounded to me like you wouldn't be allowed to bet there.

First mover advantage is big here.  I would say a few million plus support costs is much too conservative considering how long you'll be sat there waiting for people to use your technology and upkeep. 

The Quack never made a profit and spent a lot more than a few million on tech.  Laddies price must have pretty much been tech costs only and that was £30 odd million from memory.

having no api and ergo no bots hammering the hardware, just ordinary backers and layers at least initially would significantly reduce the hardware set up costs.

iz77778 is right, you start out with core functionality first and build from there. personally I think the more flashy the betfair front end has got the less I've liked it and the slower it has become unless you're on a high spec machine.

I know from experience you'd only need a team single figures in size to build the core system, besides stuff done by big teams tends to be less tight code wise and more prone to bugs.
But unless they were very very well paid , then those who built it would own it, at least that would be my attitude.

as with most things only takes 3 things :-
money
the will to do it
the skill to do it