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 does this company make? This question is exactly what has compelled me to write this article. I will not get copies of these accounts from companies house, the content is going to be all conjecture depending on what I've acquired while using the site over 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, that which you have no idea on any particular sporting event is what has been bet in whole and also 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 one of many traditional bookmakers websites and backing the different horses. The outcome is say the second favourite winning, we've got no idea whether people were backing the outsider or favourite, how much was bet, and what kind of assist the bookmaker made.

Now consider the same race with Betfair. The total amount exchanged to the race emerged near the top of the page, this is typically about A�200,000 for a standard horse race. Now we all know that Betfair have a commission on all winnings, as well as every bet exchanged you will find there's winner, so they're taking their 5% whatever the result - about A�10,000 in this instance.

So now for a quick little 'back of fag packet' maths. Approximately 40 races per day generating A�10,000 each is A�400,000 per day seven days every week, sbobet that's 2.8 million pounds per week. Throw inside the bigger meetings knowning that rounds it down to state 3 million, 5% that is A�150,000.

Now look at the Premiership football season. At least 12 games every week generating between A�200,000 as well as a million pounds in exchanged bets, consider the average and exercise the 5% commission and 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 per week in revenue.

Bear at heart that you could (and individuals do) bet on everything, golf, cricket, tennis, boxing, champions league football, International soccer, let alone gaming. I'm needs to come to the conclusion that they must be attracting weekly revenue inside millions, and when it's only A�3 million a week, that's over 150 million a year.

I admit to getting not a clue if my workings are drastically wrong here, and if Betfair actually has annual revenue of A�1million or A�1billion. Neither do I have a sense of what their legal fees, IT costs etc add up to. What I do see is unlike traditional bookmakers the result of the sporting event does not have any effect on their revenue.

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