Betfair s Free Sport Betting Business Model

I've been using Betfair for a long time now however it is only recently I've wondered simply how much performs this company actually make? This question is what has compelled me to publish this article. I will not receive copies with their accounts from companies house, this article will likely be all conjecture according to what I've grabbed by using the web page through the years.

What has allowed me to ponder this question could be the transparency within the Betfair site. If you consider traditional bookies such as WilliamHill, Ladbrokes or Betfred, that which you have no idea on any particular sporting event is exactly what has become bet altogether as well as 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 onto among the traditional bookmakers websites and backing the different horses. The outcome is say the second favourite winning, we've got no clue whether everyone was backing the outsider or favourite, the amount was bet, and what sort of profit the bookmaker made.

Now take into account the same race with Betfair. The total amount exchanged for that race is given near the top of the page, this is typically about A�200,000 for the standard horse race. Now we realize that Betfair take a commission on all winnings, and then for every bet exchanged there is a winner, so they're taking their 5% no matter the result - about A�10,000 in this instance.

So now to get a quick little bit of 'back of fag packet' maths. Approximately 40 races each day generating A�10,000 each is A�400,000 a day 1 week every week, that's 2.8 million pounds per week. Throw within the bigger meetings and that rounds up to say 3 million, sbobet 5% ones is A�150,000.

Now think about the Premiership football season. At least 12 games a week generating between A�200,000 and a million pounds in exchanged bets, make average and workout the 5% commission knowning that's another A�350,000. On top of this there's the lower league and foreign games that must generate another A�100,000 in commission so we're up to Half a thousand pounds every week in revenue.

Bear at heart that you can (and the ones do) bet on everything, golf, cricket, tennis, boxing, champions league football, International soccer, let alone gaming. I'm beginning to arrive at the final outcome that they must be getting weekly revenue within the millions, if it's only A�3 million weekly, that's over 150 million annually.

I admit to presenting not a clue if my workings are drastically wrong here, of course, if Betfair actually has annual revenue of A�1million or A�1billion. Neither do I have a solid idea of what their hips, IT costs etc figure to. What I do see is that unlike traditional bookmakers the results of any sporting event has no bearing on their revenue.

To this end their main aim must be to just recruit as many customers as you possibly can, which poses the question; using the numerous online bookies out there offering free introductory bets all the way to as well as in excess of A�100, then exactly why do Betfair just offer A�30. That is the topic of my next article.