Betfair – Cross matching
Cross matching has slowly been implemented across many sports markets on Betfair and earlier this year on the big one, horse racing.
There are still some odd things with cross matching. Prices for the API and for the Betfair web site are different. This is because cross matching is not exposed via the API. We put the cross matching algorithm into Bet Angel, but quite a large number of API applications still show the ‘wrong’ prices. Betfair also never tell you when it is on or off, this only adds to the confusion.
When it was introduced on Horse Racing it was positioned as follows: –
“Cross-matching was introduced on most sports during 2008 and has had a significant, positive impact on liquidity.”
As you may be aware, because we are in the market all the time, we keep very detailed records on just about anything that happens. This gave us the chance to observe what happened when the cross matching was switched on in the horse racing markets.
Curiously the implementation caused the fill rate to drop from it’s previous level. What we found was that if you put an order in the market and waited for it to be filled, it filled twice as fast before cross matching was implemented than after it’s implementation. That seems a bit odd. Some of it could be accounted for by the fact that money now appearas elsewhere in the book when it can’t get matched at a certain price, but the average queue size doesn’t seem to reflect that.
Currently we are studying the markets post the 18th July. We are doing this because we do expect another change. We will report back when we have enough data as to how is has changed from this date.
A different sort of cross matching
