Category: Betfair
Betdaq boost
Yesterday saw a fairly big boost on trading volume on the horse racing markets on Betdaq, which was more or less running at double last weeks numbers on average. It’s too early to say if this is a sustained increase or just a blip, but it’s encouraging.
I’m not going to tell you to use one exchange or the other or both, that’s your decision, not mine. Everybody is at different stages of their trading. But there are obvious benefits …
60% Premium charge
On the first day of trading on 22nd October 2010 Betfair shares closed at 1550p. At the time of writing this post the shares are trading at 627p or down nearly 60% from that closing high. How ironic!
I don’t want to feed that hand that bites me, to reverse the common metaphor. So, for me at least, action speak louder than words. Whether volume decreases or increases on the Betfair exchange, why will be the most pressing question. Volume …
Betfair down, again!
Just two days before Betfair are due to impose massive increases in costs on their users, they face yet another major outage on their site.
You just can’t really believe it’s possible to get much worse PR for Betfair, but somehow they manage to pull another shocker out of the hat. It’s really quite incredible. You think the least they could do was quickly put a message up on their service page.
Repeating patterns
Sometimes the markets surprise me, but more often than not they don’t. After 11 years of doing this, even the surprises don’t seem surprising any more. But yesterday I got a surprise.
Yesterday, last year, I traded a race at Catterick and got a really cracking result from it. A year later at the same course, on the same day and on the exact same race I got the same result. You would think it impossible that such a thing …
Practice makes perfect
I thought I would make this post to remind people to upgrade / try the latest version of Bet Angel. I’m motivated to highlight this by the fact that only a portion of our users base have upgraded at the moment according to last months figures.
As a reminder, we recently introduced a very comprehensive practice mode in the latest release of Bet Angel, version 1.28. You can see more about it here: –
The practice / training / …
A year after leaving
A very interesting post from Ex Betfair man Mark Davis has appeared on his blog this evening, worth a read: –
https://www.markxdavies.com/2011/07/04/a-year-after-leaving/
Lack of liquidity
Low matched bet turnover, gappy prices, lack of depth in the market. Yes, I am sure you are familiar with these problems. But I’m not talking about Betdaq, I am talking about Betfair.
Back when Betfair started the markets were pretty thin, but I still saw opportunity in them. As people began to develop techniques to squeak a few quid out of these markets things improved. As traders joined the market and improved liquidity, bigger backers and layers started to …
Jelly
A long time ago I worked for a company where the MD had a great idea. A quick way to boost profits was to levy a new charge for delivery. He asked for comments.
“Jelly” I responded. Everybody thought it was an insult not piece of insight. But my point was that like squashing Jelly, new charges wouldn’t lead to the problem being stamped on, it would just lead to the problem oozing out elsewhere in the business.
Imposing the …
June
June turned out to be a very good month in the end and much better than I expected. It was the best June I’ve had for a few years. How useful to have a decent send off as it were, given the news from last week.
The highlight was obviously Royal Ascot and that contributed the bulk of things for the month. As I have done for a little while, I used both exchanges during Ascot week and this has …
Betfair premium charge & earnings soar
As we are all aware now, Betfair pleaded poverty and an imbalanced business model again yesterday, when announcing another new charge. This time hitting consistent earners for up to 60% of their profits. We heard the similar stories for data charges, transaction charges and the premium charge part one and all the other various amendments over the years to their charge structure.
This didn’t stop them from announcing record revenue and earnings a few hours later. Earnings per share are …
Betfair confirms CEO to quit
“After ten years with Betfair, and nearly six as CEO, David Yu has informed the Board that he believes it is now the right time for the company to start looking for his successor. He does not intend to renew his current contract (which expires in October 2012) and therefore the Board will now begin a search process for a new CEO. During the process of identifying his successor, David will remain fully committed to the Company and to delivering …
Betfair poised to replace chief executive
Interesting report in the Telegraph which popped up late last night.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/
Betfair files complaint over Greek ban
Betfair has filed a complaint with the European Commission over the ban on betting exchanges contained within the Greek draft egaming law.
https://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/betfair-greece-idUKLDE7571AL20110608?type=companyNews
Levy board statement
The HBLB made a statement yesterday which you can read here: –
https://www.hblb.org.uk/document.php?id=411&search=
Betfair’s response is here: –
https://corporate.betfair.com/media/press-releases/2011/2011-06-08.aspx
Half price sale underway
When Betfair floated I got some stick for saying they were overvalued and they were not a buy. This wasn’t a statement on Betfair’s business or business model, more the price it was selling at.
I first started taking an interest in the stock market in the mid 80’s and five or so years later I started investing. One thing I learnt is that if a company IPO’s and sells some of it’s stock it will do so at the …
Open letter to Betfair
Dear Betfair Support,
As you may be aware the world is due to end to at 6pm local time in the UK. In case you are not aware I would like to point you to the following news article that explains the detail behind this prediction: –
https://fostercity.patch.com/articles/will-the-world-end-today
Obviously this is of great concern!
Putting aside a key concern about whether you are I will be raptured. I would like to raise a few points with you?
If the world …
Betfair clarify outage policy
A positive move from Betfair to help people out when the site goes down, credit to Betfair for addressing these long held concerns. For the full detail of the statement click on the following link: –
https://promotions.betfair.com/customer … -update-uk
Betfair have also clarified what constitutes an outage: –
“In the event of an unplanned Sports Exchange outage, we will disable the betting functionality across all channels, ensuring a level playing field. However, should Betfair Mobile and/or our API go down, …
Fair weather
Well what a start to spring we have had in the UK! It’s more like the summer at the moment, not that this will impress people in warming climates, but it’s a welcome period after a very cold winter. Having flown away to warmer places in February, it’s been a good start to the year. No seasonal disorder for me this year!
The racing markets have been better in April as well, so the weather on that front is improving. …
Schwing
A really good day for swing traders and a generally good day to boot. Plenty of races, plenty of opportunties whatever your style; but the thing that stood out today were some big swings. Hope you had a good one.
Record day
Phew, what a weekend that was!
We are now entering peak season for all things sports related and this weekend was a good warm up for the months ahead. It also set a new bench mark for me as the Saturday just gone turned out to be my best ever day on Betfair! Whether I can ever beat such a storming weekend is another question. When you have been going for as long as me, you need a little luck …
Slapped wrists
Looks like Betfair have got slapped wrists again for their advertising.
This time is was for their claim that punters are 40% better off than industry SP when taking Betfair SP. I note the adjudication upheld elements of of the claim, but failed to take account of the fact a punter on Betfair who picked each winner in the manner laid out would never ever get to the number they quote as they would get thumped 20% of profits by …
Betfair offer an explanation
Betfair have offered an explanation of the significant outage yesterday, to view it click on the following link: –
https://promotions.betfair.com/explanation
They have promised to attempt to do any further work on the site for the whole of next week.
What a joke!
Just two days before Cheltenham we find ourselves facing another Betfair outage. Not just that, but this is the second day in a row that the site has been offline. This is the worst period for reliability I can remember on Betfair.
Some years ago Betfair used to boast about how many transactions they did per day, but that took a back seat when the focus turned to reducing the load on the system, which no doubt reduced costs also. …
Betfair switches to Gibraltar
Betfair released an interim management statement today detailing the following results: –
Overall Core Betfair revenue up 6.2% on Q3 FY10 to £77.0m
Core Betfair Sports revenue up 8.6% to £56.6m
Core Betfair Games revenue up 8.2% to £14.3m
Core Betfair Poker revenue down 20.5% to £5.2m
Further down the statement they slipped in the following announcement: –
Betfair announces that, with effect from 9 March 2011, its Betting Exchange will operate under a Gibraltar licence.…
Not again!
Got back to my desk on Sunday evening to see that Betfair had been offline again on Sunday afternoon. My commiserations for anybody that was caught out. I had some spreadsheets running but, fortunately, they were not completely caught out; only a minor hit. I am relatively inactive at the moment as the February is a good period to take time out with the family. I work very hard in the Summer, so this time of the year is when …
Ladbrokes results
There is a summary here: –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12490900
Or the full detail here: –
https://www.ladbrokesplc.com/media-centre/press-releases/releases-2011/2011-02-17.aspx
A mixed bag of results, but pretty good given the underlying weakness in core markets. Labrokes is still 3-4 times the size of Betfair depending on how you measure it.
Where Angel’s don’t fear to tread
Just over a week ago we had the Betfair upgrade and first outage.
Betfair has a chequered history of outage’s, but have been much better in recent years. Because Bet Angel was around before the API was created, we have always maintained a dual mode of operation. You can connect to Betfair via non API (The website) or API modes.
I tend to connect by the API but I have both available at all times, just in case there is …
Down, Down
I would like to give you an update as to how February is going, I’ll let you know when I can log into Betfair!
It’s been the worst week for Betfair for some time. If Betfair would like to offer up some more detailed explanation I am sure we can all make a better judgement as to why the site is less stable than ever recently. In the absence of that we will have to speculate why a company that …
Betfair maintenance
Unfortunately it looks like this Betfair ‘maintenance’ did not go well and the API is not working as expected. Numerous other issues have been occuring since the site came back. With Ludlow cancelled this is is a clear indication that today will be an inactive day. A frustrating end to the month.
If you still want to log into Betfair, the API is currently reported as being down. But if you are using the very latest version of Bet Angel, …
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