Betfair s Free Sport Betting Business Model

I've been using Betfair for years now yet it's only recently I've wondered the amount performs this company actually make? This question is what has compelled me to write this short article. I will not be getting copies of the accounts from companies house, this content will likely be all conjecture based on what I've grabbed while using the web page over time.

What has allowed me to ponder this question may be the transparency in the Betfair site. If you consider traditional bookies including WilliamHill, Ladbrokes or Betfred, that which you have no idea of on any particular sporting event is what has been bet in whole and 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 various horses. The outcome is repeat the second favourite winning, we've got no clue whether individuals were backing the outsider or favourite, just how much was bet, and what sort of profit the bookmaker made.

Now consider the same race with Betfair. The total amount exchanged to the race is offered at the top of the page, that is typically about A�200,000 to get a standard horse race. Now we know that Betfair have a commission on all winnings, as well as every bet exchanged there is a winner, so they're taking their 5% whatever the result - about A�10,000 in such cases.

So now for any quick little bit of 'back of fag packet' maths. Approximately 40 races every day generating A�10,000 are all A�400,000 every day 1 week per week, that's 2.8 million pounds every week. Throw in the bigger meetings which rounds it down to convey 3 million, 5% ones is A�150,000.

Now look at the Premiership football season. At least 12 games weekly generating between A�200,000 and a million pounds in exchanged bets, consider the average and sboarena figure out the 5% commission which's another A�350,000. On top of this you have the lower league and foreign games that must generate another A�100,000 in commission so we're up to Half a million pounds every week in revenue.

Bear in mind that one could (and people do) bet on everything, golf, cricket, tennis, boxing, champions league football, International soccer, let alone gaming. I'm beginning to come to concluding that they must be attracting weekly revenue in the millions, and if it's only A�3 million every week, that's over 150 million 12 months.

I admit to using no 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 concept of what their attorney's fees, IT costs etc total. What I do see is unlike traditional bookmakers the results of the sporting event has no bearing on their revenue.

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