I know this has been discussed before but is there any analysis of how Betfair SP compares with the last traded price at the off on horse races? Does the Betfair SP tend to be longer or shorter than the LTP? Does it vary between favourites and outsiders? Are there any trends?
The reason I ask is because I have noticed that BF use their SPs as a big marketing tool. They claim that their SPs are better (i.e. bigger) than the bookies' SPs by up to 10% (even higher on outsiders). They produce of large amount of analysis to demonstrate this point.
With my cynical hat on, this would indicate that the BF SP is open to manipulation and it is in BF's interest to calculate SP on a basis that will skew towards the high side. I don't have any conclusive analysis of this but am interested to know what has been the experience of others. I know the BF website provides examples of how the Betfair SP is calculated but to me, it seems at times arbitrary.
Betfair SP
They cant produce SPs consistantly above 100& overround or it would favour the back side. I'm sure that in some instances they are manipulated (not neccessarily by BF) for other reasons. On the site you can see how historical SPs compare with bookie SPs for each runner of each race to compare
Over 100 favours the layers and bookies operate at a book overround of 115-120%.
Looking at the BF SP books there is generally an underround (sometimes as low as 90%) with the occassional overound (generally 103% or less) which suggests that BF SP favours backers.
The pre-race books trade consistently at (or very near to) 100% as many of the bots are set up to trade on this basis.
Looking at the BF SP books there is generally an underround (sometimes as low as 90%) with the occassional overound (generally 103% or less) which suggests that BF SP favours backers.
The pre-race books trade consistently at (or very near to) 100% as many of the bots are set up to trade on this basis.