Affordability checks affecting market volume?

Covid has massively impacted Horse racing, much more than affordability checks imho.

How long was there zero racing for in 2021?  That was bound to change peoples daily habits.
When it restarted it there was months of racecards with 3/4/5/6 runners in every race.

Would be interesting to see the data without the In-Play bets as I'd guess the data would show an even sharper decline.

I'd like to see those numbers broken down by pre-race and in-running. Because a lack of money betting at 1.01 in-running would affect those figures a lot, owing to the way Befair calculates matched amounts. It feels as though both of them are declining - pre-race as well as in-running - but it would be good to have it confirmed.

But the main thing to take from those figures is the way the rot suddenly set in as early as 2018. Affordability checks may well accelerate the demise of the horse-racing markets, but those figures suggest they were heading for the grave anyway.

the slight rise in 2014 and dramatic drop in 2018 are likely to be because of an 'arrangement' between certain parties which started and ended at those times.

apologies for being purposely vague, I don't wish to disclose details I was only party to as a minion.

this arrangement only affected pre off betting volume.

pre race
2008    £630,880
2009    £678,906
2010    £611,935
2011    £614,625
2012    £656,412
2013    £604,140
2014    £627,422
2015    £631,588
2016    £632,392
2017    £598,559
2018    £518,750
2019    £494,363
2020    £473,404
2021    £397,301
2022    £329,964

in running
2008    £160,486
2009    £182,464
2010    £197,800
2011    £214,147
2012    £199,722
2013    £182,691
2014    £184,832
2015    £182,784
2016    £191,317
2017    £191,866
2018    £173,415
2019    £158,938
2020    £155,470
2021    £137,467
2022    £105,811

Those figures are raw. No account for inflation.

Up until 2008 was predicting over 2,000,000 matched a race by 2012 as growth was explosive. Everybody loved Betfair back then.

You should blame the recession we are in, covid and cost of living. And those number were the Golden Era of Betfair its was new. Looked at the Poker boom of 2012 oh my oh my

Interesting to see remote gambling on horseracing gross gambling yield numbers from GC website:

2015 346m
2016 426m
2017 612m
2018 512m
2019 654m
2020 856m
2021 769m

2020 was a freak year for remote because people could not get to betting shops.

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiZTAwNmQwMjQtMjdlYy00NWJlLWFjYTgtMTUzZTQ1ZTBjYzVkIiwidCI6IjdkZGRmZjkyLTFkZTYtNDgzNS05OTYzLTg0ZTdjYzQ0Y2VhMiJ9

The drop in exchange horseracing volumes in the last decade seems unique to the exchange.

Has the betting on football  been affected  in a similar way ?

One of the constant gripes; Premium Charge.

An invention unique to the exchange, and when you couple it with the non changing 'lifetime' thresholds you have a net that just keeps catching fish with no rebate.

People hit it and pack up.
When a person manages to win against all odds, then gets given an extra monkey to carry that eradicates their profit margin then the inevitable happens...they go and the churn they provided goes, bad for the whole eco system.

The irony is that each firm has their own idea of what is affordable.

Purple appear to be far less draconian than BF.

they go and the churn they provided goes, bad for the whole eco system

Can't work out why you would be worried about a winner leaving a P2P betting exchange

Btw, does anyone know if firms are collaborating with one another in determining affordability for customers?

they go and the churn they provided goes, bad for the whole eco system

Can't work out why you would be worried about a winner leaving a P2P betting exchange

Because no two people operate the same, no single person only ever wins, they lose and thats somebody else's win.

Just like the food chain, when animals start vanishing the animals that rely on them eventually go too.


Was it around 2017/18 ish when they had the Q/A where they stated they wouldnt be promoting IR on horses anymore?
That renages on their previous claim that PC is used to generate further interest. (they will argue that they never said like for like....which means if all you ever do is bet IR and pay PC you are getting royally shafted)

Many thanks for that breakdown, frog. So the plunge is uniform and across-the-board: both pre-race and in-running. Matched amounts peaked in 2018, declined a little in 2019, and then fell like a stone.

I'll tell you one thing which changed in 2019: the switch to 2% commission for everyone, and an end to the Betfair points system, whereby the more commission you paid, the lower your commission rate became. I remember commenting on here at the time that this was going to remove one of the biggest incentives for arbing: that arbing was an excellent way to reduce your commission rate. And that that this move would adversely affect liquidity.

I think that horse-racing has been the sport of choice for arbers, because of the sheer number of opportunities, plus the chances of a jackpot, thanks to best-odds-guaranteed and dual result at the bookies. So it's here in horse racing that the effect of the loss of arbers would be most felt.

I can say myself that arbing was never really worth the aggravation in terms of money won, but hugely worth it in terms of Betfair  points, and getting my commission rate down for general betting on here. But once it became 2% for everyone, I gradually stopped going into betting shops every morning, looking for arbs. There was no longer any point. And hence the amount I laid on here just plummeted.

BF know their actions over PC are regressive.
By not offering a rebate in the form of income tax- free thresholds they are stangling off the exchange.
Marginal winners may seem predatory, but not really. They are barely keeping their heads above water.

marginal winners don't pay PC

ofc they do
Once a person passes the lifetime threshold they pay the given level % on every penny they profit (win - loss)
And get next to no benefit for churning large amounts in the process of profiting fractions more than they lose.

Feb 13, 2023 -- 11:55AM, dustybin wrote:

they go and the churn they provided goes, bad for the whole eco systemCan't work out why you would be worried about a winner leaving a P2P betting exchange Because no two people operate the same, no single person only ever wins, they lose and thats somebody else's win.Just like the food chain, when animals start vanishing the animals that rely on them eventually go too.Was it around 2017/18 ish when they had the Q/A where they stated they wouldnt be promoting IR on horses anymore?That renages on their previous claim that PC is used to generate further interest. (they will argue that they never said like for like....which means if all you ever do is bet IR and pay PC you are getting royally shafted)

Very much doubt that the people who were winning in 2008 are winning doing exactly the same thing now to win.

A winner this year is a potential loser next year. The more money in the market the more efficient it would become.

Premium Charge was a way to maximise the sale price of the exchange by giving revenue a short term boost.

Business is business and those that made the decision had no reason to care less about the long term future of the exchange.

Now it is the poor relation of a highly profitable sportsbook and numbers business. A strong exchange would threaten that.

@dustybin

I think you're wrong.  If my liftime winnings ever pass the magic threshold, I am already paying about 70% of my net winnings in commission, so I would not pay PC.

frog100013 Feb 23 12:29Joined: 25 Jan 01 | Topic/replies: 4,472 | Blogger: frog1000's blog

Premium Charge was a way to maximise the sale price of the exchange by giving revenue a short term boost.

Business is business and those that made the decision had no reason to care less about the long term future of the exchange.

Now it is the poor relation of a highly profitable sportsbook and numbers business. A strong exchange would threaten that.

Frog nails it in about three sentences. I probably would have added a 4th about their ever increasing presence in their own markets - but sadly for dusty, he can't accept that reality (that the bookmakers and the exchange are deliberately re-modelling themselves away from gambling in preference for gaming) - because none of that fits in with his one dimensional ideology that interfering "do-ggoders" and "the commies" must be responsible for everything that he doesn't like!

What the PC actually is is an arbitrary figure written in stone that never changes (along with inflation for ex, or offers an annual allowance akin to a salary does frough Income Tax)
We are talking about the sustainability of a person using the exchange.

What BF effectively do is say every person using the exchange has to provide X amount of profit to the company, irrespective of how well they happen to beat their cohorts.
OFC where a person already provides an amount greater than X the artificial metric is not required.

Once people hit the threshold the only way they can avoid PC in future is by losing. People dont tend to stick around losing longterm.

An ever decreasing liquidity results in fewer matched bets, resulting in ever decreasing liquidity, so yes the greater liquidity makes for a more efficient exchange.

There are plenty on the exchange who wont entertain betting with the sportsbook (myself inc) and some (who knows how many?) who win every year doing the same thing they always did (myself inc)


TM aint even worth responding to.

So it has nothing to do with more and more people packing in betting on horse racing then? Out of a large group of friends who were all regular horse racing punters I'm the only one who still bets regular (and in saying that I've only bet once in the last 8 days). Unfortunately these checks are being now used across the board to hide many of the other problems in the sport. If, as we keep being told, horse racing has never been straighter why are so many long time punters knocking it on the head? Totally ironic to see trainers jump on the affordability check bandwagon for the sake of punters, the same punters they normally couldn't give a **** about. How many letters does the Racing Post print from disgruntled punters about a rancid ride? But they have no problem printing letters from disgruntled punters re the checks. I never thought I'd see as many people I know pack in betting on the horses, and it's down to corruption rather than checks. I've never seen so much corruption myself in the game and I'm heading down the same path of knocking on the head completely in the near future. I now bet much more on the football, a scenario I could never envisage a few years ago. And I can see why many others now do the same.

I don't think it's largely down to corruption myself. It's more like what Veitch was on about. Too much racing. You have to watch too much of it to have a clue  and it's on while people are doing other things during the day ( like working ! )  Football totally different and you can watch in the evenings.

People constantly mis-state the mechanics of the premium charge. As longbridge points out plenty of winners don't pay it because they are credited with enough charges from the normal system. If you are nittily, almost always, backing winners, you will pay PC - but why would someone like that leave the exchange?  I imagine that there are bot controlled market maker types who will provide liquidity and pay PC - yet again I can't see why they would leave unless they start to lose. 

Horse betting on the exchange is declining because betfair make utterly no effort to attract new people to it, because they would rather have those people on the sportsbook. No new people means no added liquidity with  losses, so some who used to make a profit from new recruits begin to lose and leave the exchange or cut down. The basic truth of P2P betting is that a constant flow of new losers is needed to keep winners in the game.

There are plenty of people who have worked towards the threshold (so many markets played for 20%) or 250k lifetime profit - HR) via having only a relatively small % profit that get eradicated once the hammer of PC hits.

As mentioned, as people hit the PC threshold they never get any future benefit, theres no allowance per year for X amount of winnings, if you win you pay the rate on all your profit for the whole time you make one (not withstanding the times you are effectively winning following a losing week where you are just making back the difference to the % you last paid PC.

People who pay PC pack up when the time to profit ration becomes worse than they get elsewhere doing other things.

And btw, not mentioning those who dont pay PC isnt relevant when referring to the reasons why people do give up when having to.

Anyone that pays less than 20% charges falls into the  "nittily, almost always, backing winners" category imo.

On the subject of affordability checks, seems that purple's minimum threshold is £1,000 a month before they require docs etc to increase it.

Here it's £100.

Quite a discrepancy.

What does 'nittily' mean in this context?

Ive just explained you are measured against never moving criteria, once you pass them and dont churn huge amounts relative to profit, you get hit with varying levels of PC

Who bets with the view to lose?
Nobody, everyone bets with a view to win. You can profit only a small amount to amount lost and get a significant amount artificially taken.

btw I do agree that 50% is too high, but 20% is fine. I still stand by my statement that moving from decent winning to marginal winning or losing (for the reasons above) is much more of a factor than PC.

Feb 13, 2023 -- 1:12PM, MJK wrote:

So it has nothing to do with more and more people packing in betting on horse racing then? Out of a large group of friends who were all regular horse racing punters I'm the only one who still bets regular (and in saying that I've only bet once in the last 8 days). Unfortunately these checks are being now used across the board to hide many of the other problems in the sport. If, as we keep being told, horse racing has never been straighter why are so many long time punters knocking it on the head? Totally ironic to see trainers jump on the affordability check bandwagon for the sake of punters, the same punters they normally couldn't give a **** about. How many letters does the Racing Post print from disgruntled punters about a rancid ride? But they have no problem printing letters from disgruntled punters re the checks. I never thought I'd see as many people I know pack in betting on the horses, and it's down to corruption rather than checks. I've never seen so much corruption myself in the game and I'm heading down the same path of knocking on the head completely in the near future. I now bet much more on the football, a scenario I could never envisage a few years ago. And I can see why many others now do the same.

I thought this after looking at the betfair exchanges numbers but the reality of the gross gambling yield for online bookmakers is that racing is booming.

2015 346m
2016 426m
2017 612m
2018 512m
2019 654m
2020 856m
2021 769m

2020 was a freak year for remote because people could not get to betting shops.

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiZTAwNmQwMjQtMjdlYy00NWJlLWFjYTgtMTUzZTQ1ZTBjYzVkIiwidCI6IjdkZGRmZjkyLTFkZTYtNDgzNS05OTYzLTg0ZTdjYzQ0Y2VhMiJ9

It 2015-2021 it went up 122%. At the same time football (only) went up 88% and all sports combined went uo 36%

Remote slots went up 92%

Remote slots gross gambling yield was £3bn (75% of all remote casino).

Remote betting (football, racing, dogs, golf, tennis etc) was £2.36bn.

Slots are massive but racing was growing faster! so much for the aging demographic and people not being interested.

My conclusion now is that Flutter is canabalising the exchange in favour of the sportsbooks. It keeps the exchange as it is a near monopoly that in someone else's hands could threaten the sportsbooks.

The simple solution to all this affordability stuff would be to issue seperation gaming and betting licences.

@frog100

"Interesting to see remote gambling on horseracing gross gambling yield numbers from GC website...The drop in exchange horseracing volumes in the last decade seems unique to the exchange."

Apologies if I fail to follow what you meant to convey, but are those GC numbers all gambling or specifically Horseracing?

If all gambling, then I do not think your conclusion of "unique to the Exchange" follows - I think there is consensus that HR as a gambling medium is in slow decline with those new to gambling (replacing those who fall off their perches) mainly betting on Football and other mainstream sports?

look at his 9.27 post

@dave1357 ah - he dropped the word "horseracing" in the later post. 

Thanks, interesting - I wouldn't have thought racing gambling was on the up in recent years with any operator let alone overall.

Tanksfrog.

For me I'm not  concerned or affected by AC. It's restriction and withdrawal hindrance post winning the real issue. With AC I can choose whether to oblige or no prior to placing a bet. However, the latter is nothing but sharp practise by bookies solely to frustrate punter and profit regardless.

Bring on the long overdue Gambling White Paper. And, come what may given alternatives aplenty.

the exchanges won't be reversing these checks even if the govt say they can

All grim at the moment the colour of hurdles the national mess the rubbish cards like yesterday the whip and peeing yes peeing in the streets all appear headliners for somebody not the actual racing everything you need for a sport on the up then will be justification for deaths at Chelters. still a million students went onto middle of some course at the weekend that was good and just to remind myself the booing of poor old Jonbon can it get any better. I cannot be bothered these days certainly like I used to do on horses gambling has lost its fizz many many must be feeling the same I suspect.

The final straw however will be when I'm asked for an AC you can imagine my response gracious as it would always be will be go away that will be it. I went into a Willies over the weekend first time in a very long time into a shop to stick placepots on how things have changed looked pretty desperate stuff to me no more. They surely cannot survive.

Loto.

Not all doom and gloom Lads/Corol planning to open more shops.
have a good day

Ronnie.

Lads/Corol planning to open more shops. Bingo! Don't be fooled my this Racing Post b*ll S*it.... Bookmakers just want more profits, so they are putting Mass pressure on the media, so the government become lenient in the White Paper. Because guess what....? "Online slots and casinos are going to take a hefty drumming down like you've never seen before.(something I'm pleased with, because I understand the science)  That's their guaranteed profits dwindling..........................

Given the evidence that the non problem gamblers of any metric out numbers problem gamblers by over 10-1 you'll find the vast majority will be hoping the White Paper is lenient.

The fact the GC guy is attempting to argue its more complicated than singling out specific gambling activities should worry all people involved.
There is simply no correlation that punishing the only suppliers of gambling products will either encourage them to focus on other areas within this distinction, or new providers who are prepared to be more heavily regulated will decide to take their place.

@pandora

why do you  think the exchanges won't reverse this policy ieven if the gov't let them?

Longbridge, because i cannot envisage any scenario where the exchanges would send out emails to low paid, unemployed etc saying all is forgiven, you can re open your account and yuou can do what you like. I just think these restrictions will stay.

Why would that be specific to the exchaganges - do you think the sportsbooks and slots operators would send out such emails?

haven't a clue , i was just referring to the exchanges where these restrictions seems to be the most severe

Not sure if you have any exidence of that, but I would be surprised if the average deposit of exchange customers wasn't higher than other types of gambling, therefore triggering affordability enquiries. The result of the check should be consistent across all types of gambling.

My friend recently opened a new account on an exchange and was asked for proof of identity and proof of income after three days to continue betting.

Feb 14, 2023 -- 10:15AM, pandora1963 wrote:

haven't a clue , i was just referring to the exchanges where these restrictions seems to be the most severe

Exchanges need more capital to trade and market make.

id is pretty standard but it would be worrying if they were asking new exchange customers for income information documents as a standard process.

Feb 14, 2023 -- 12:29PM, dave1357 wrote:

id is pretty standard but it would be worrying if they were asking new exchange customers for income information documents as a standard process.

Imagine that is more to do with Smarkets' cull of winning accounts