Is this the beginning of the end for Betfair...

The only chance they would have is to seed the markets both pre off and IR.T


Wont happen. They would need to seed well above the sportsbook prices lads currently lay and wont happen imho

Morning wee eck, Yes it's a tough game laying and very long term, but as you say at least you are not losing. Regarding MJ's horse, I am not a fan of the stable but had backed that horse last time out when Fanning had given it an awful ride and the extra distance yesterday was very much a plus.
Getting back to the subject, this purple thing should liven things up a bit.

I recall a story given to us in crappy business studies.....
It was about how coca cola missed its chance to kill Pepsi in the 80s.
Basically it came down to Pepsi making a 2 ltr bottle before coca cola or sumat like that just to survive, but coca cola were too slow in snatching back the market and Pepsi recovered.
The saying was that had cola made 2 ltr bottles at the right time revenue would have been squeezed from Pepsi and they'd have died.

Lads could potentially kill bf by under cutting on the back of a lot of customer hatred, then betfair have not room to get these ppl back, they die and lads do what they fookin want.

It's fairly obvious to ALL of us that if Betfair just REMOVED the Premium Charge there would be very few people leaving for purple no matter what the incentives they provide.

It's very simple Betfair - you know what to do.

It would not only keep all the current customers , it would attract back those that had left and also we could all suddenly expound to all and sundry what a great way to win money Betfair is and thus attract new customers too , in their thousands.

The PC stopped Betfair growth overnight.

Betfair should get rid of the PC and have a flat rate of commission of 4%. Good for big and small players imo.

BETFAIR IS A COMPANY NOW WITH SHAREHOLDERS AND ITS MAIN PRIORITY IS TO MAKE HUGE PROFITS FOR ITS SHAREHOLDERS ,IT HAS TO ANSWER TO THEM NOT THEIR CUSTOMERS

corbie but if they strike a partnership with the Chinese government... One day someone will imo

BETFAIR ARE HERE TO MAKE LOADS OF MONEY FOR THEIR SHARE HOLDERS NOT TO MAKE YOU LOADS OF MONEY

That is true Do Wah,but they DO have to have customers in order to make any sort of profit.

IF IT WAS MY COMPANY I WOULD SAY TO THE DIRECTORS MAKE ME LOADS OF MONEY OR I WILL GET RID OF YOU

THE DIRECTORS WILL SAY THE CUSTOMERS ARE NOT HAPPY ABOUT THE P C CHARGE ,SHOULD WE REMOVE IT AND MAKE THEM HAPPY AND MAKE LESS PROFIT,OR SHOULD WE KEEP THE P C AND MAKE LOADS MORE MONEY FOR OUR SHAREHOLDERS AND MAKE THEM SMILE

THEY WILL SAY KEEP THE SHAREHOLDERS HAPPY AS THEY PAY OUR WAGES TO US DIRECTLY

^ the share price is sinking faster than the Titanic, so they're not doing a great job currently are they - and don't forget a lot of their shareholders are customers who, if the ship continues to sink, will bale out their shares pronto.

YOU CANT JUMP OFF THE TITANIC IF THERES NO OTHER BOAT TO CLIMB ONTO

Rather than the "beginning of the end" for the real Mc coy exchange I rather think
it will be the "end of the beginning" if more competition is encouraged but I personally
would never jump ship as this place is just too damn good

Betfair has to do a balancing act, you cannot look after your shareholders if your customers are doing a runner.

It seems to me it will do no harm for Betfair to have competition and if it stops them being too greedy and destroying the goose that laid the golden egg then three cheers.

I do think Betfair would have more to worry about if it was anyone else other than ladbrokes.

BF FANATIC IF I WAS THE MANAGER OF BETFAIR AND I RED YOUR POST ,I WOULD SEND YOU A FREE BETFAIR PEN AS YOU ARE A LOYAL CUSTOMER,I WOULD SEND YOU ONE IF IT WAS MY FIRM

Of all the bookmakers, Ladbrokes are the only ones that have treated me well in the shops even when
winning hundreds or getting a decect candian up they pay-out with a smile.

Perhaps the other bookmakers should send there staff to laddies to see what customer care is all about

"YOU CANT JUMP OFF THE TITANIC IF THERES NO OTHER BOAT TO CLIMB ONTO "

the good ship SS **** is steaming to the rescue as we speak

Do Wah Diddy

Stop shouting,your doing my head in.

Anyway it just needs Laddies to really push the new site and punters will join in.

^SS Laddaq

If I were working for Betfair the first thing I would do is give Do wah Diddy and zodiac new keyboards
sent out with a secret lower-case activation chip inside so that they could try life in the slow lane

SHUDACUDA ,IF LITTLE THINGS LIKE PEOPLE WRITING IN CAPITALS DOES YOUR HEAD IN ,YOU COULD HAVE SERIOUS MENTAL PROBLEMS,YOU MIGHT THINK ITS  ANOTHER ONE OF THEM CAPS LOCKERS AGAIN .I USED TO BE LIKE YOU WITH PEOPLE WHO NEVER USED TO DRINK ALCOHOL  I THOUGHT THEY  WERE ALL UNDER THE THUMB,UNTILL I LEANRED IT WAS ME THAT WAS THE PROBLEM  NOT THEM

The biggest factor will not be in racing but longer duration sports like football, cricket and tennis where Ladbrokes will look to price up in-running betting markets from Purple, and feed its fixed odds in-running stakes back into the exchange.

In horseracing, the revolution it will allow is withdrawal from the SP system (whose days may be numbered anyway under competition law). This would give Ladbroke's a huge advantage over Hills and Corals. I doubt this will happen immediately but will be surprised if it is not part of Ladbroke's planning.

competitiveness= lower charges for customers

Betfair have just reduced the intro bonus for new clients - [used to be £25 to new custmer and £25 to existing client] to only £10


thats how much of a concern Laddies taking over is....

Do Wah Diddy

diddy dum diddy do

Delta with respect as I have said before if Laddies play their cards right

this exchange has plenty to be concerned about.

I can't see why Laddies would try and promote a war between two exchange models which if it was successful would surely detract from their own core business ( not FOBTS obviously ). Of course they could be out to put Betfair out of business then close the purple one         

May I ask here:

Do the course bookies use b daq at present?

Though thread after thread on this forum goes on about the course bookies using btfr, my understanding is that they actually use the purple.

Even before getting the answer, I feel SP is definitely going to change.

Yes most use the RCT system which uses the purple place.

RDT*

The acquisition of dak by a mjor bookmaker must in reality be for the technology and to have some control over
the profit created by other bookmakers that use dak for laying, the effect on sp wont be that significant
and most pro punts are done on BF and not dak due to liquidity problems though
this is only a reasoned perspective.

SS there's plenty of people that would never even bother trying to place a fixed odds bet at a bookies or on-course. A large number of these will be those that used to stake £100-£200. I think the time is right for L adbrokes to get some of their business. At the moment they don't make a penny from me but soon .....

wee eck     24 Jan 13 13:17 
Delta with respect as I have said before if Laddies play their cards right

this exchange has plenty to be concerned about.

with respect wee eck, tell me what cards they have to play to get it right ?

The difficulty is there is a problem with the exchange model. Too much of what is lost goes to other punters not to the company. Anybody who comes on here moaning about paying 40 or 60% PC has won at least £250k. That's money which a normal bookie would take themselves.

corbiewood, for a start have lower commission structure a guarantee that a type

of premium charge will never be introduced reopen the forum and seed the main

markets a little until natural liquidity takes effect and as importantly as any

point I have made have a customer service dept. that listens and does its hardest

to help customers.

^^^^^ bookies have liability,s     exchange is a risk free commissino income for company  therefore  its all about more liquidity more profit.    there will always be winners on an exchange

If laddies come up with something like this place used to be normal bookies won't be doing much business. They could have most of the exchange business rather than none of it.

Bookies USED to take risks aspy. Now they are run by accountants which is why they close winning accounts. It's all about profit and the exchange model doesn't make much sense once it grows and goes public.

Agree Howard.That is how the world works.Adapt or get left behind it is that simple.Too much is made of winners on here.Betfair has taken away the dream and that is what is killing liquidity and the same thing has killed the highstreet firms.People need the dream of becoming a pro punter to be alive so you cannot over charge people who make a living or the ones who arnt will give up chasing the dream.The PC needs to be scrapped.

There is absolute no way I will ever be using **** again, even if they get rid of their commission charge altogether.

Why ? Call it cutting off my nose to spite my face, but Ladbrokes have closed my accounts 4 times in the past. I'm sure this has happened to many others. So, why would I want to fill their pockets in the future. They didn't want my business, and now I don't want theirs.

My **** account is now closed.

You can't expect a firm to go on letting more and more people win big time while they provide the platform. And where do you think all the muggs are going to come from ?

"Whilst the main focus of our digital growth strategy continues to progress well, this bolt on acquisition provides us with an exciting opportunity to grow our share of wallet through the creation of a differentiated and comprehensive sports betting proposition for customers and also supports our drive for improved liability management." (Laddies Chief Exec. Richard Glynn).

What he really means is, if The Purple becomes a significant player, they will have far better control over manipulating the markets.

Customer service wont create growth, this is just a nonsense. Your viewing it through the eyes of a punter in at the beginning with betfair, someone who has some sort of perverse bond regardless of financial reward - and your dismayed that the company has put bottom line and margin ahead of your customer ideals.

also the ' natural ' liquidty doesnt exist, its bought in - just like the sand on the palm in Dubai. another myth the 'sharp minds' PR has spun.

Everyone needs to wake up and smell the money.

Pretty clear Laddies see an opportunity to take advantaged of the number of disgruntled BF punters. I suspect this is maybe the reason why BF are finally making an effort to listen to users re the hated new site. The question for BF is: is it too little too late? Once punters start migrating they will probably never come back, always assuming Laddies get liquidity up, which shouldn´t be a big prob for them.

Thats just silly WFT,variety is the spice of life.Closing your account imo is cutting off your nose to spite your face.I had my deposit limit set so i couldnt use the site much but i lifted it today after the news and i wonder how many others did the same.I am happy at Betfair but i am not happy being at a dissadvantage to others by having to pay the PC.Its discrimination against winners and im as loyal as the next man but not wheni feel wronged and i hope ther is competition because then it will be up to Betfair to shwo they want my custom because as it is im not sure they do want winners as customers?

This exchange has nothing to be concerned about imo. The other bookies have plenty to be concerned about. See above for what I think Ladbroke's will do. They bought Purple to boost Ladbroke's, not to boost Purple.

who knows maybe **** will be bigger than Betfair in 10 yrs or much less. I remember in the late 70s, darts was bigger than snooker, then it flip flopped under Barry hearn, now its flip flopped back and darts is big again.
Same with video. Everyone said Betamax was better than VHS but the latter became the more popular

Ram good insight earlier. You don't think laddies want to run the no.1 exchange ?

Talks with **** began over a year ago but were characterised as “only a discussion about technology supply”. Ladbrokes admitted earlier this month that they had morphed into merger discussions.

The pair already have a commercial relationship, with Ladbrokes using the betting exchange to hedge bets.

Profits @ Bf are a fraction of what the bookies are taking. Yes, I'm sure they'd prefer Purple to be Number One but I doubt it is their priority.

"Thats just silly WFT"

It's a matter of principle. Ladbrokes have been the worst of the "big" bookmakers for many a year when it comes to a) offering a decent price, and b) taking a decent bet.

I'm astounded that people think they can do a good job with ****. They're an atrocious company. Don't get suckered in.

True enough WFT but Baldy and the rest aren't angels are they ? And now you will get a decent price and a decent bet providing there's low/zero commission and no PC.

i honestly think 30m is cheap but its 30m wasted along with their 50m last year on improving their online growth. Ladcrooks cannot market or do offers and have no media persona. no matter what they do they need to change their image perception.

Lads is valued at £1.8 billion - the acquisition is valued at £25 million or 1.4% of its capitalisation. So not significant in financial terms.

BD has probably been losing money hand over fist and even a billionaire will look to cut his losses eventually, especially as the alternative would have been a huge investment to compete with BF, and Desmond obviously didn't fancy his chances.Easier pickings elsewhere in currency trading along with the big Irish players & Joe Lewis.

So, what's in it for Lads? Take them at their word and it seems that increased market share is the aim. But is it? They have built their company on a fixed odds model, so they will want to enhance that not cannibalise it. Improved liability management is also mentioned, so having their own exchange will help but all they had to do was look at BF's site if that's what they wanted.More likely, as Ramruma said in an earlier post, Lads SP comes closer to fruition.Their ability to manipulate SP's on an exchange will be much easier than through the on-course market so SP optimisation would be easy.

Do they want to shaft BF? Why, how much of a threat now are BF to Lads? In the early days of BF, maybe they saw BF as a threat.But BF's share is stuck at around 7-9% of the market - so not much of a threat. Do they want exchange profits - BF are not making much more than £50-70 million so would they make the investment necessary to take some of that? Can't see them doing that, to be honest. What about overseas? Perhaps they see the exchange model being easier to introuduce than a fixed odds model and in new markets they could go in on BF's coattails when they open things up.

The exchanges are a refuge for all the punters that the fixed odds bookies don't want. When you have had accounts closed there is nowhere else to go except here or BD.Do they want these players back? Really?

Lads have got an up and running exchange for a fraction of the cost that they would have to put up starting from scratch. This option has been on the table since BF started but initially Big Books were against the very existance of exchanges. Billies still are and are pursuing the courts for increased taxation on exchanges.

So who will be affected? Arbers for one. Can you see much opportunity for hedging in Lads shops now whensooner or later every price and liability management will be electronically linked.

Opinion players could do better if Lads compete on terms with lower commissions and bot traders will benefit if there is no PC to contend with.

There is no brand loyalty attached to BF because of their "squeezing the pips" strategy so with sentiment not coming into it I can only see those who are over the £250k limit switching to BD. Will that help BD to succeed or will it be of more help to BF? Liquidity will be the key issue.

For everyone on here, it can only help that a rival with the the sort of clout that Lads has, is in the market.

But if only the big winners go purple...... surely there is a problem.

Now Ladbrokes own an exchange, will they be able to more accurately identify the "shrewdies/insiders" and hedge more effectively by shadowing their activities?

Ladbrokes are a reprehensible outfit and i would never bet with them or any company owned by them

Ladbrokes could get access to quicker SiS pictures for in running to promote liquidity on horse racing

The purple site has been a lame duck, but now with the clout of Lads they could become a threat to betfair.  And they should be concerned about it,  because now they have a competitor who could become serious.

will laddies encourage their current user base of presumeably losing gamblers to use the site,if so the sharks would soon be there to eat the fish.at the moment and in the past betduck markets tend to look like a 1970's disco with a couple of bots flashing on and off,without them getting gamblers to use it they have little chance of success imho.

josh apiafi ‏@joshapiafi

The **** / Lads deal is all to do with one shareholder, D Desmond, **** not worth £30mil and Desmond large Lads shareholder #easyexit

Why the hell would they want THEIR losers to lose to other sharks on Betduq ?

Think B/F concern is crystal clear from the fact this thread remains "open".

bet daq,£50 min bet.

Cork, could be good feed back for them, lay of the land etc.

wee eck, wish that were the case, unfortunately think you'll find that their patrons views have been of no consequence to them for some considerable time now, and is unlikely to change anytime soon

Cork, circumstances can change things, laddies have the clout to damage this exchange

of that there can be no doubt.

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

Is this the same ladbroes whos online business is pitifully profitable and been left behind by 365 and the like?

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.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2013/jan/24/ladbrokes-****-takover-betfair

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

Good deal for Messrs Magnier & Desmond, marginal deal for Laddies, bad deal for bf.

As one of the small fry I'm looking forward to some competition for bf.

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.

Good post, Sandown. I think they see this as a way to stop arbers - however, at £30m that's at a very heavy cost. It will be interesting to see what their long term strategy will be for them.

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.

According to a LSE discloser Andrew 'Bert' Black sold 450k of his shares today.

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.....

Ithought Ladbrokes were dead against exchanges.will they still be campaigning for exchange layers to be licenced.

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.

The Core of any Betting Exchange is their "Losers".
BF have them at the moment.
If Laddies really want them they will get a healthy percentage of them.
I watch with interest.

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?

They did,not want to accommodate arbers in their shops, but suspect these same people will be more than welcome on their exchange.Will they now give these customers a better allround service in their shops

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.

A more likely reason for Lads intervention than the need to compete with BF, is the competitive need to catch up with Billies with the digital revolution. WH paid $144m for Playtech after blowing some £30m on their own in-house effort which failed.Its a must to have a strong on-line presence and Lads don't want to miss out. The BD acquisition plus the stake in their tech supplier, which may be just as important to them, keeps them in the game and saves time. Plus, given that Desmond, a billionaire, is a big Lads investor,just how critical is £25m to them or him? Probably just increases his Lads shares a notch or two, doesn't he?

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

they are both light years behind 365.

fair play to betfair for leaving this thread up.

probably because the product development manager is taking notes !

I'm a premium charge payer but I've only played on one race since the  Melbourne Spring Carnival. One thing Betfair may not fully understand is the disincentive of this charge. I turned over millions in the noughties but now just pick and choose a few good markets. I don't rely on this game for an income now obviously, so if there is a sea change I will consider a switch. 

A factor in favour of the new exchange being successful is the horrendously amateurish way they have to date run the business. It can really only get a lot better but it has to be all laddies from hereon with no reference to the nightmare that was color purple.

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.

Don't have a problem with their integrity .. and most bets got matched close to the off, but the overnight and morning trade was almost non existant, and seemed to have no clue how to improve that.  Won't get started on the poker.

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

Johnny, have you looked on here recently for early prices, a joke.

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).

I like to back huge outsiders and leave I/R lays to 'steal' points, and as unhappy as I am with many aspects of Betfair, the I/R on Betdiq is beyond a joke!

Every now and again, I'll get a massive outsider in, and on here, the lay prices go in stages, whereas on Betdiq the lay at 50 (for a 200 shot) seems to go at exactly the same time as the lay at 7/4

Unless the outsider REALLY looks like it can WIN (not just get in the shake-up) the lays DO NOT get matched!
I've had rags at 200+ on Betdiq, being beaten narrowly (under a length) and the 50 lay hasn't even been taken...that's hugely irritating!

I won around £600 on Betdiq one day (for a few quid on a rag) and felt like I'd been robbed...at least on here, I get my stake back and a bit of profit on rags that I don't think I/R have looked to have had a realistic winning chance - I've regularly had matched lay bets at ridiculously short odds, when I haven't been genuinely excited about them having a winning chance, and we all know that a three figure longshot on the premises has us on the edge of our seat!

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.

Thanks sandown, but taking court action against the govt is one thing: no court can make the govt change a tax regime. A bit ambiguous really. WH asking for Bf punters to pay levy is a little different from "pursuing the courts for increased taxation on exchanges" imo.

No big deal though.