If you haven’t received an email, click on the following link to learn more: –
https://betting.betfair.com/betfair-announcements/
To navigate directly to choose a rewards plan visit here: –
https://myaccount.betfair.com/rewards/my-rewards/choose
Special deals
For some time I’ve been aware that Betfair had been making a few offers to different customers. But this has been based very specifically around certain types of account activity.
The net effect of this was to balance out a number of different incentives and rewards for the different types of activity on the exchange. But most of these have been net neutral in terms of their impact on individual accounts and the amount of commission that has been paid. There didn’t seem to be any pattern and it applied to horse racing as much as cricket. But it did seems to be selective from an account perspective.
There were individual promotions as well, but detail on them and why there were offered was a bit sketchy.
Betfair rewards
About one month ago we started getting reports that Betfair had initiated a program called a ‘rewards plan’ where customers could choose to fix their commission in return for additional incentives or lack thereof. Curiously this wasn’t reported by customers in the UK and it seems to replace the Betfair points and switch it to a
At first, it looked like this was being specifically offered to particular customers but referring information on their website appeared to show it had been in place at least since June. Quite a few reports were coming in despite the offer not appearing to be generally available. You can see the discussion in the forum: –
https://www.betangel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=19507
No exceptions? Apart from Premium charge payers!
I’m not aware of any particular exceptions but if you are aware of any then I will add them to this blog post for the benefit of anybody that arrives here. Of course, if you are a higher rate premium charge payer this is a bit of an irrelevance. Whatever deal I choose to sign up on, will always get topped up to the higher rate of premium charged that I have to pay each week.
However, for the vast majority of users. I would imagine that there is an incentive to be to sign up to one of these particular schemes. The basic rewards plan basically excludes you from any interim promotions but gives you a 2 per cent commission on net winnings on Betfair exchange markets. I am sure that this will be attractive to many people. The other two schemes give you varying commissions and varying incentives to take up additional offers that take place.
It looks like it will allow you to switch to one of these plans. So it’s probably worth doing fairly immediately. That doesn’t appear to be that many terms and conditions applicable. However I noticed on one email that I didn’t get that it was implying that the ability to change plans looks to expire at some point in the near future.
However, the ability to switch plans before this date has set appears to be the case. So even if you make a mistake it looks like you can actually change backwards and forwards between these commission plans before the lockdown date.
If you’re interested in learning more about this and the impact on your trading and the potential impact on the exchange come in and have a chat on the forum thread that’s been very active now for some time on this thread. Everybody is discussing this particular move by Betfair and the likely impact on their own peer tells and on the activity on the exchange.
Join in the discussion here: –
https://www.betangel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19679
The race to the bottom?
It is interesting to see this move as it seems to signal a shift in Betfair’s betting exchange strategy. A comment in February 2018 indicated that Betfair would not follow the rush by other betting exchanges, such as Betdaq, Smarkets and Matchbook to lower commission rates.
https://egr.global/intel/news/betfair-warns-of-exchange-race-to-the-bottom/
However, I’ve noticed that volumes have been slipping on key markets for some time and this has accelerated in 2019. Betfair have actually stopped publishing data on indiviudal markets. But because I record and archive data on all markets I trade I can see all market changes first hand.
While a move to lower commision doens’t benefit me at all, as a higehr rate premium charge payer. I’d imagine it should have an impact on some markets by encouraging a bit more activity. I’m hopeful that this will happen, but open minded enough to sit and wait to see if it feeds through into the numbers.
Driving growth in Betting exchanges
If the move is to counter offers by other exchanges, it’s a welcome sign that competition does have an impact can drive future growth.
This move may hurt other betting exchanges, particular the Betdaq exchange who have invested money to promote themselves as the 2% commission exchange. I remember commenting to them that if I was a competitior an easy way to undermine their proposition was to match it. As you would then trash the entire marketing message. That looks like it has come true.
It will be interesting to see where the market heads from there. Better pricing should keep people in the game for longer and allow people
Ultimately using exchanges as a pool to hedge into while skinning liquidity into punter friendy formats is the way I would use exchanges. The potential is there but not all aspects are being address, but a reduction in commision should make exchanges a better proposition, attractive and a simpler proposition again.
