Your optimism is commendable wee eck, I hope I'm proven wrong, as valid competition can only help us all

VALUEMAN, that may be, but this exchange cannot take the chance that Laddies will let

things virtually stay as they are, I will predict that within a short time span things

will change favourably for existing customers on here.

Betfair do need to change, the problem is anyone with the power to do something is completely out of touch with customer feeling.

Right now it seems ridic to suggest that Betfair could be put in trouble but it can happen, obv a different market but the once all powerful Guitar Centre group in America is now shrinking as bad feeling has grown in the last couple of years, they had as big a share of their market as Betfair do but they have begun wobbling, it feels like typing a few words online or moaning to your pals won't change anything but it can if most of decide to try out a competitor.

Guitar Centre's troubles began with bad feeling on forums (including their own which was one of the biggest communities anywhere online) because of poor customer service and a snowball began, several companies have taken advantage and kept new customers by offering a great service and are now growing, Purple can do it and have got a great opportunity, feck knows if they will take it.

There is not a hope of them being a success unless they have a viable in-running product.

There isnt enough customers/liquidity to go round so a defection of people from BF to BD could cause poor liquidity on both exchanges and screw everything for everyone.

I too found Sandown post more relevant than most.

This is Ladbroke we are talking. Tactics can change but objective wont and it will be accountancy based for sure and risk averse as is possible.

How it will effect affect BF is unclear at the moment.

But i would say this.

Buy the rumour, sell the fact.

I am sure laws and regulations are going to impact down the not too distant.

I am absolutely sure real estate and the high street have changed and this matters.

F O B T etc are a huge consideration.

No one has mentioned the washed money and believe me the figures are huge.

No one knows how the land will lie in 5 years but most are positioning for the change.

We are the cannon fodder.

Could i be clearer,well no actually.

Recently dumped his Swindon shares also.

Unemployment will continue to rise...disposable income will continue to fall.

Banks wont lend to fuel property bubbles when the 30yr mortgage is defunct.

The world is gone mad on Bonds Again, Derivatives Again.
Stocks are at 5 year high fuelled by banks and money men.
These will ultimately fail.

More bailouts are guaranteed

Where would you go if you had alot of money..

One day we will all wake up and decide that

GOLD is just a pretty metal........

Could i have been more clear...well no actually.....

Put yourself in the place of a senior Lads exec or an investment banker managing a big stake in Lads. What is the biggest risk to yr company strategy?

It's that a tougher regulatory regime comes in for FOBTs. What if the max. stake is slashed and the no. per shop goes down to two? You have a generation of shop players who find horses too slow; many of these are web-literate and will have a bet on their phones if they bet on the horses at all.

And say you have shop closures. You will have a corps of dissaffected former staff, a few of whom will know how to take +ve expectation arbs.

Yr aim is going to be to make betting on the horses as much like betting on the FOBTs as poss. Already Lads shops have machines where you can bet w/out on the horses w/out having to interact w/ a cashier (I have yet to succeed in arbing one of these machines). Soon these will have comprehensive liabilities-mgt. programs for shops that have them laying a price that beats their bricks-and-mortar competitors but can be fed back into the daq.

Billies still are and are pursuing the courts for increased taxation on exchanges.

Not sure what you mean Sandown. Any new or increased taxation has to originate via parliament, surely?

alias

http://www.bookmakersreview.com/gambling-news/william-hill-announces-yet-another-legal-action-time-against-uk-government/44653    last year
William Hill announces yet another legal action this time against the UK Government
William Hill wants exchange customers to pay horse racing betting levy, but announces plan to fight paying new point of consumption tax in the UK.

A couple of weeks after the High Court in the UK ruled in favour of the position supported by Betfair that customers of betting exchanges are not liable to pay the horse racing betting Levy, William Hill announced it will appeal the ruling.

ladbrokes dont need to catch up with hills in any way regards market share or digital infrastructure.

they are both light years behind 365.

probably because the product development manager is taking notes !

Jonhhy, I fully understand that for big players up to the present time liquidity

for big players on the purple site  was an insurmountable problem but I have a

friend who used the site for years using stakes of between 20-50 pounds and never

has had, according to him, a problem.

Ive been using **** for over a year , as long as you are backing or laying front ones you can get 3 and 4 hundred quids matched not too badly, i imagine the ir side of things is non existant tho

Just stinks of desperation to me....Laddies have just completely lost their way....an old dinosaur completely eclipsed by more dynamic firms (pp/365)...new websites awful and more than a year late, early prices that they should be embarrassed at, coupled with no guarantee until after midday...they just seem to be in a complete panic. Any change in FOBT rules and they are done. There is zero chance of them making **** a viable alternative to Betfair (which is a shame).

Ladbrokes will need to go cut-price with **** if they are to compete with the rival Betfair betting exchange. Photo: David Sillitoe


If a business with a near-monopoly on the supply of its product suddenly receives a threat of serious competition, you would expect its share price to take a hit. Betfair's share price scarcely wavered on Thursday when it was confirmed that Ladbrokes has taken over ****.com, Betfair's only worthwhile rival in the betting exchange market, which might suggest that, even with one of the most famous brands in gambling behind it, **** still does not rate as serious competition.

And in the short term at least, it does not. The market now values Betfair at £700m, way below the figure of £1.3bn when it floated in the autumn of 2010, but that is still a great deal more than the £20m Ladbrokes has paid for ****. Despite all the money that Dermot Desmond has thrown at it, **** has been more of a spectator than a player while Betfair has changed the face of betting over the past decade.

**** never really recovered from a horribly ill-conceived launch in September 2001, a little over a year after Betfair matched its first bet. **** pitched itself as the betting site for high-rollers, with markets that were listed in dollars to make it feel more "international", but which also condescended to give the rest of us a chance to take on the big boys like Desmond's associate, JP McManus.

Many potential customers weighed up this opportunity to match their puny wads against that of the mighty – and impeccably well-informed – McManus, and decided to pass. Betfair, which already had a five-length advantage from the off as the first mover in the market, gained another 10 because **** was facing in the wrong direction. From that point on, the slow starter has never really threatened to close the gap.

Ladbrokes, of course, has much more experience and skill in terms of appealing to the mass market, though its precise intentions for **** remain unclear. It may be more interested in ****'s hedging capabilities or its technology than it is in becoming a realistic competitor to Betfair.

But if Ladbrokes is serious about mounting a serious challenge to Betfair's near-monopoly on exchange betting, there is only one way they are likely to be able to do it. It can plough as much money as it wants into marketing, in an attempt to attract new customers to exchange betting while stealing others away from Betfair, but the clients it really needs are not susceptible to advertising.

The serious money that underpins Betfair's liquidity in its main markets on racing and football is provided by a relative handful of its millions of clients (no more than a few hundred, according to one estimate). Their money is not sentimental, nor is it necessarily loyal by choice. It is there because Betfair is the best and also the cheapest place to be, and it is not going to evaporate and repool under ****'s purple flag without a compelling reason to do so.

The obvious way to attract the biggest players is to make **** even cheaper. Both Betfair and **** have similar sliding scales for the commission they charge on winning bets, from 5% for small fry down to 2% for the biggest players of all, although Betfair also levies a significant – and much-resented – "premium charge" on accounts which are substantial and consistent winners. Unless **** launches a price war via its commission rates, it is likely to carry on bumping along the bottom forever.

One reason that the premium charge was introduced in the first place, though, is the gravitational pull that the biggest bankrolls in an exchange exert on the smaller players. The charge is, to some extent, the fee that the regular winners on Betfair pay to guarantee a continued supply of losers for them to beat, via Betfair's promotional efforts and expansion into new markets.

And there is a similar force at work in the exchange market as a whole. The pull of the overwhelming liquidity in Betfair's markets is difficult to resist, and it extends to the in-running markets too, where its clients enjoy the chance to lay off liabilities. It will take an immense and sustained effort on commission rates to persuade enough of the heavy hitters to shift their business across to a new home, and that will cost plenty.

It could also prompt Betfair to respond in kind, of course, and competition can only be a good thing for punters, although turning a monopoly into a duopoly is not quite the same as creating a multiplicity of choice. And since the money that really matters here is at the top end of the market, whether the punters paying 5% can ever hope for a permanent reduction to four or three is doubtful, to say the least.

But it would be fascinating to see how it all played out. The exchange market is still relatively young, there is no reason to think that it is close to being mature and the imposition of the premium charge was an indication in itself that exchanges can develop in unexpected ways. Betfair's share price did not miss a beat on Thursday, but a return from £6.80 to the heady days of the £13 launch price - when even Paul Roy, the chairman of the British Horseracing Authority, was a buyer – now seems to have receded even further into the far-off future.