Betfair s Free Sport Betting Business Model

I've been using Betfair for a long time now yet it's only recently I've wondered the amount does this company can certainly make? This question is exactly what has compelled me to publish this informative article. I will not receive copies of their accounts from companies house, this content will be all conjecture based on what I've picked up while using the site through the years.

What has allowed me to ponder this question could be the transparency in the Betfair site. If you consider traditional bookies for sboarena example WilliamHill, Ladbrokes or Betfred, what you have no idea of on any particular sporting event is the thing that may be bet in whole and so on what particular outcome these bets were placed.

Take an everyday Friday afternoon race meeting at say Ascot. It's the 2.30 and 5 horses are racing; the punters are logging onto one of the traditional bookmakers websites and backing the different horses. The outcome is say the second favourite winning, we've got not a clue whether individuals were backing the outsider or favourite, the amount was bet, and what sort of assist the bookmaker made.

Now think about the same race with Betfair. The total amount exchanged with the race is given near the top of the page, this can be typically about A�200,000 to get a standard horse race. Now we know that Betfair please take a commission on all winnings, as well as every bet exchanged there is a winner, so they're taking their 5% no matter what result - about A�10,000 in cases like this.

So now for any quick little bit of 'back of fag packet' maths. Approximately 40 races a day generating A�10,000 each is A�400,000 per day 1 week a week, that's 2.8 million pounds weekly. Throw inside the bigger meetings which rounds up to state 3 million, 5% of which is A�150,000.

Now take into account the Premiership football season. At least 12 games a week generating between A�200,000 and a million pounds in exchanged bets, consider the average and figure out the 5% commission understanding that's another A�350,000. On top of this there's the lower league and foreign games that has to generate another A�100,000 in commission so we're up to Half a thousand pounds every week in revenue.

Bear in your mind that you can (and the ones do) bet on everything, golf, cricket, tennis, boxing, champions league football, International soccer, not forgetting gaming. I'm beginning to arrive at concluding that they must be pulling in weekly revenue within the millions, if it's only A�3 million a week, that's over 150 million per year.

I admit to getting no idea if my workings are drastically wrong here, and if Betfair actually has annual revenue of A�1million or A�1billion. Neither do I have a solid idea of what their attorney's fees, IT costs etc total. What I do see is the fact that unlike traditional bookmakers the result of the sporting event doesn't have any touching on their revenue.

To this end their main aim must be to just recruit as numerous customers as possible, which poses the question; while using numerous online bookies around offering free introductory bets of up to plus more than A�100, then so why do Betfair offer only A�30. That may be the topic of my next article.