Betfair s Free Sport Betting Business Model

I've been using Betfair for years now yet it's only recently I've wondered how much performs this company make? This question 's what has compelled me to write this article. I will not receive copies of the accounts from companies house, the content will likely be all conjecture based on what I've picked up from using the site through the years.

What has allowed me to ponder this question will be the transparency inside Betfair site. If you consider traditional bookies for example WilliamHill, Ladbrokes or Betfred, whatever you have no idea of 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 to among the traditional bookmakers websites and backing the many horses. The outcome is repeat the second favourite winning, we've no clue whether individuals were backing the outsider or favourite, simply how much was bet, sboarena and what are the conserve the bookmaker made.

Now consider the same race with Betfair. The total amount exchanged for your race is offered at the top of the page, this really is typically about A�200,000 to get a standard horse race. Now we know that Betfair please take a commission on all winnings, and for every bet exchanged there's 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 every day generating A�10,000 each is A�400,000 each day 1 week a week, that's 2.8 million pounds per week. Throw inside the bigger meetings understanding that rounds it up to express 3 million, 5% of which is A�150,000.

Now consider the Premiership football season. At least 12 games per week generating between A�200,000 along with a million pounds in exchanged bets, go ahead and take average and exercise the 5% commission knowning that's another A�350,000. On top of this there's 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 weekly in revenue.

Bear at heart that you can (and individuals do) bet on everything, golf, cricket, tennis, boxing, champions league football, International soccer, as well as gaming. I'm beginning to arrived at the final outcome that they must be pulling in weekly revenue inside millions, if it's only A�3 million weekly, that's over 150 million a year.

I admit to getting not a clue if my workings are drastically wrong here, if Betfair actually has annual revenue of A�1million or A�1billion. Neither do I have a concept of what their hips, IT costs etc add up to. What I do see is always that unlike traditional bookmakers the outcome from a sporting event doesn't have relating their revenue.

To this end their main aim must be to just recruit as many customers as possible, which poses the question; with the numerous online bookies available offering free introductory bets of up to plus excess of A�100, then how come Betfair offer only A�30. That is the topic of my next article.