Betfair s Free Sport Betting Business Model

I've been using Betfair for years now yet it's only recently I've wondered just how much can this company make? This question is exactly what has compelled me to create this short article. I will not get copies with their accounts from companies house, the content will likely be all conjecture determined by what I've picked up from using your website through the years.

What has allowed me to ponder this question may be the transparency within the Betfair site. If you consider traditional bookies including WilliamHill, Ladbrokes or Betfred, that which you do not know on any particular sporting event is what has been bet as a whole and on what particular outcome these bets were placed.

Take a normal Friday afternoon race meeting at say Ascot. It's the 2.30 and 5 horses are racing; the punters are logging on to among the traditional bookmakers websites and backing various horses. The outcome is say the second favourite winning, we now have no clue whether everyone was backing the outsider or favourite, simply how much was bet, and what sort of conserve the bookmaker made.

Now look at the same race with Betfair. The total amount exchanged for your race is given towards the top of the page, this is typically about A�200,000 for the standard horse race. Now we understand that Betfair please take a commission on all winnings, as well as every bet exchanged there's a winner, so they're taking their 5% regardless of the result - about A�10,000 in cases like this.

So now for the quick bit of 'back of fag packet' maths. Approximately 40 races per day generating A�10,000 are all A�400,000 per day seven days per week, that's 2.8 million pounds every week. Throw in the bigger meetings understanding that rounds it up to say 3 million, 5% ones is A�150,000.

Now take into account the Premiership football season. At least 12 games every week generating between A�200,000 and a million pounds in exchanged bets, consider the average and figure out the 5% commission which's another A�350,000. On top of this you have 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 weekly in revenue.

Bear at heart you could (and people do) bet on everything, golf, cricket, tennis, boxing, champions league football, International soccer, not forgetting gaming. I'm needs to arrived at the conclusion that they must be attracting weekly revenue in the millions, if it's only A�3 million weekly, that's over 150 million per year.

I admit to presenting not a clue if my workings are drastically wrong here, and sbobet when Betfair actually has annual revenue of A�1million or A�1billion. Neither do I have a concept of what their legal fees, IT costs etc amount to. What I do see is that unlike traditional bookmakers the outcome of the sporting event doesn't have touching on their revenue.

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