Thursday 15 January 2009

Good News, Bad News


It's been a while since I vented about Betfair's Premium Charge so bear with me. I'd almost forgotten how annoying this Premium Charge is. This week, while my back is turned, I am robbed of another £500.00, a sum which is especially painful since it follows close on the heels of a £1,400 loss on Monday. (The good news is that next week's charge will be reduced!) To be quite honest, the impact prior to this week has been less than I feared, but this week was quite a hit.

Sadly for an alternative, BETDAQ just doesn't cut it. The liquidity simply isn't there, so I don't have any realistic alternative but to continue, and accept a reduced profit. For all their denials, the fact is that Betfair is a monopoly. There is no other betting exchange that has the range of markets and the liquidity that Betfair offer and like many monopolies before them, they abuse their position in the market, and take advantage of customers that they know can not pick up and move elsewhere. There was much fuming on the forum when the charge was first announced, with many people saying they were leaving, but I suspect that the reality is most people are still there.

The original concept of a betting exchange was really quite brilliant, and like so many brilliant ideas, really quite simple. Model it on the Stock Exchange, match backers and layers and take a percentage commission. I just don't think that the Stock Exchange charges anything like 20% commission based on a formula that isn't verifiable or consistent and which penalises one group of customers over another.

Vent over.

4 comments:

Richard said...

It's a sucker punch. They get us hooked so to speak on their great product and once they've felt that they've saturated the market - BAMB! Premium charge. The annoying thing is that the maths is so complicated that's it's really hard to work out if you're ahead of the curve!

Richard said...

That last comment was from me - Richard www.100betting.co.uk. Appreciate your comment on the Newcastle game.

Anonymous said...

It makes you wonder how far Betfair can push it's customers before they will leave. It seems that point has not been reached from the premium charge as I agree with you, most users are still there. I'm just like you, I have accepted the premium charge and carried on.

Cassini said...

If you mostly trade in-play like I do, then there is currently no realistic alternative. I have moved all my straight punts to BETDAQ, but that's a small percentage of my betting.