Future of Betfair

News, chat and debate about the Betfair betting exchange.
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Crazyskier
Posts: 1157
Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2016 6:36 pm

LeTiss wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:24 am
I always had my concerns about the future of Betfair, the moment they opened a Sportsbook

It went against the very principles of the Exchange. When Betfair started, they were different and appealed to punters, layers and traders alike. Traders need the punters for liquidity and getting matched. The Sportsbook takes many of those punters away, which is terrible for the traders. This partially explains why the fill-rate feels slower these days

I remember the likes of Ladbrokes trying to close Betfair down. They thought it was plain wrong that they had built up years of goodwill, and Joe Bloggs shouldn't be allowed to lay bets. Clearly, they were protecting their own business, but Betfair won that battle, so to end up becoming a bookmaker themselves was akin to getting in bed with the enemy

Don't get me started on XM...... :evil:
I read your posts with interest LeTiss, and as usual, you have very eloquently mirrored my precise thoughts on the nature of 'an exchange'. Betfair marketed the heck out of it's USP at the time, namely punters betting against punters (as opposed to bookies), so to see the sportsbook tab was just a betrayal of their own principles as far as I'm concerned.

CS
harry
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2020 9:04 am

Dim wrote:
Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:02 pm

That are your views ? Will cryptocurrencies change the sport betting markets operate?
I think this is already happening to some extent.

For example, look at the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. They listed Trump/Biden contracts for the previous election, and they also have some for the next election: https://ftx.com/trade/TRUMP2024

Volumes are still low, and it's politics rather than sports, but it's a crypto betting market in the way you describe. I don't know what the legal status of accessing them in the UK is.

There are some other, more decentralised crypto betting platforms.

Augur: https://augur.net
Catnip: https://catnip.exchange

They also listed US election contracts, and their pricing was pretty far out of line with Betfair and others. However it wasn't really arb-able because the blockchain transaction fees are just too high. It also feels like the kind of thing where you can lose all of your money easily if you don't know what you're doing.
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jamesedwards
Posts: 2234
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:16 pm

I didn't think it was possible to trade in and out of Crypto without building enormous tax liabilities?
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