Betfair App Cloud

[Will Sharpe]

BETFAIR GROUP PLC, will this week open its new 'App Cloud' service offering software developers the opportunity to build their own transactional betting websites and widgets off of Betfair's sports exchange platform.

As part of its official partnership with Betfair, Manchester United are the first to go live with an App Cloud based betting service, offering fans visiting manutd.com the opportunity to register, login and bet seamlessly with the club's tailor-made on-site betting product. Other App Cloud based products are in the pipeline, including a betting widget set to launch soon on odds comparison website OddsChecker.

Software developers will for the first time be able to build Betfair-hosted interfaces on their own websites, offering their own customers unique Betfair products designed and built by themselves.

Betfair's API (Application Programming Interface) provides live data from the Betfair Exchange for software developers to use in their own products. Currently, non Betfair-owned and non-Betfair built interfaces operating off Betfair's API contribute approximately 20% of Betfair's sports exchange revenues. The company expects this figure to grow as the process of building these external applications is made easier for developers and more accessible for their customers.

There are approximately 70,000 Betfair customers betting on the Exchange via third-party built betting applications, with approximately 50 million bets and 10 billion data requests going through these applications each week. Many creators of these applications charge their users a subscription fee. Betfair compensates third-party developers by entering a revenue sharing agreement with them on new customers who sign up to Betfair via their products.

Carel Vosloo, Betfair's App Cloud Director, said:

"Our App Cloud will further enhance the dynamism and productivity of Betfair's developer community and in turn make more Betfair products accessible to more customers.

"Having a vibrant developer community enables Betfair to outsource ingenuity and facilitate further innovation in its product range.

"We're the only ones in our industry to offer this service as only Betfair customers would pay for third-party applications. This is because only on Betfair, do customers have a chance of being winners in the long term."

The Betfair App Cloud will be open to developers from Wednesday 18th April and can be found at: http://www.cloud.betfair.com.