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 the amount can this company can certainly make? This question is the thing that has compelled me to publish this informative article. I will not get copies of these accounts from companies house, the content will probably be all conjecture determined by what I've grabbed while using the website over time.

What has allowed me to ponder this question will be the transparency within the Betfair site. If you consider traditional bookies for example WilliamHill, Ladbrokes or Betfred, that which you do not know on any particular sporting event is the thing that has become bet altogether and also on what particular outcome these bets were placed.

Take a regular Friday afternoon race meeting at say Ascot. It's the 2.30 and 5 horses are racing; the punters are logging on to one of the traditional bookmakers websites and backing the various horses. The outcome is say the second favourite winning, we have no idea whether everyone was backing the outsider or favourite, the amount was bet, and what are the assist the bookmaker made.

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

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

Now think about the Premiership football season. At least 12 games every week generating between A�200,000 along with a million pounds in exchanged bets, take the average and work out the 5% commission knowning that's another A�350,000. On top of this you have the lower league and foreign games that has got to generate another A�100,000 in commission so we're up to Half a million pounds a week in revenue.

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

I admit to using not a clue if my workings are drastically wrong here, and when Betfair actually has annual revenue of A�1million or A�1billion. Neither do I have a sense of what their attorney's fees, IT costs etc add up to. What I do see is always that unlike traditional bookmakers the end result of any sporting event doesn't have bearing on their revenue.

To this end their main aim must be to just recruit as much customers as you can, which poses the question; with the numerous online bookies around offering free introductory bets of up to along with way over A�100, then why do Betfair only offer A�30. That could be the topic of my next article.