Betfair s Free Sport Betting Business Model

I've been using Betfair for decades now however it is only recently I've wondered just how much does this company can even make? This question 's what has compelled me to write down this article. I will not be getting copies of their accounts from companies house, the information will likely be all conjecture based on what I've found while using the website in the past.

What has allowed me to ponder this question may be the transparency within the Betfair site. If you consider traditional bookies such as WilliamHill, Ladbrokes or Betfred, sboarena that which you have no idea of on any particular sporting event is what has been bet in whole and also on what particular outcome these bets were placed.

Take a consistent Friday afternoon race meeting at say Ascot. It's the 2.30 and 5 horses are racing; the punters are logging onto one of several traditional bookmakers websites and backing various horses. The outcome is say the second favourite winning, we've no clue whether individuals were backing the outsider or favourite, how much was bet, and what type of profit the bookmaker made.

Now think about the same race with Betfair. The total amount exchanged to the race emerges at the top of the page, this is typically about A�200,000 for a standard horse race. Now we all know that Betfair require a commission on all winnings, and for every bet exchanged there is a winner, so they're taking their 5% whatever the result - about A�10,000 in cases like this.

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

Now think about the Premiership football season. At least 12 games weekly generating between A�200,000 plus a million pounds in exchanged bets, take the average and workout the 5% commission understanding 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 million pounds every week in revenue.

Bear in mind that you could (and the ones do) bet on everything, golf, cricket, tennis, boxing, champions league football, International soccer, not to mention gaming. I'm beginning to come to the final outcome that they must be pulling in weekly revenue within the millions, of course, if it's only A�3 million weekly, that's over 150 million annually.

I admit to getting no idea 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 perception of what their hips, IT costs etc figure to. What I do see is unlike traditional bookmakers the result associated with a sporting event doesn't have relating their revenue.

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