Rugby League hit by betting scandal

St Helens players Sean Long and Martin Gleeson have been accused by the Daily Mail of betting that their team would lose against Bradford in a match played on Easter Monday. It is alleged that the players, knowing that a weakened team would be fielded bet that Bradford would overcome an 8 points handicap to beat St Helens. This is in contravention of two rugby league rules, firstly that a player may not bet on a match in which he or is club is participating, and secondly that he may not benefit from insider information. Long admits that he placed a bet for £1,000 with Stan James, although he claims it was for a friend. Gleeson has yet to comment. It is interesting that Gleeson chose to use a bookmaker rather than a betting exchange and it highlights the exchanges' argument that they are not the only way to back a loser. Betfair's Tony Calvin called for the RFL to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the exchanges which will enable them to ask for information about individual punters.

Betfair and Betdaq report great value bets

Grand National winner Amberleigh House was available at 28.0 on Betdaq as the tapes went up compared with the official SP of 17.0 giving backers a 75% premium. Elsewhere, backers on Betfair got lucky when Rahjel Sultan won at Bath with £18 being matched at odds of 439.

Free commission offer on Tradebetx

The recently launched exchange format version of Tradesports is offering commission free betting throughout May. Tradesports/Tradebetx are one of the only major betting exchanges to openly promote that they accept US sports bettors, and as a result have great liquidity in US markets. I will be having a closer look at this site in the next month or two.

New Developments from Betfair

Betfair have launched their new Betfair Lite PDA service which enables users to monitor prices on Betfair. They propose to develop this service further to enable users to place and update their bets.

Something I neglected to mention in the last newsletter was the launch of the Betfair's Developers Program. The announcement on the forum reads as follows:

"The Betfair Developers Program has been devised to allow developers to customise access to Betfair markets and other information. A number of users have thought of ideas to improve the Betfair interface or to build features that suit their own betting methods and systems. The Betfair Developers Program has been established to offer those users the power to implement those ideas whilst still linking to the breadth and scope of the entire Betfair product. Today we have launched the read_only services that allow programmatic access to your current bets data and Betfair market data. A future release is planned for April to allow bets to be placed, modified and cancelled through external applications."

Betsson's Czech launch causes a stir

Betsson.com has launched its Czech version of the site, this is the eighth language that Betsson supports, the others being English, Swedish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Finnish and Danish.
Chris Duncan, Betsson's Director of UK Operations commented:

"This launch has caused a real stir in the higher echelons of the Czech government, they are completely against betting companies like Betsson entering the Czech market. The story has made front page news in all the major Czech newspapers and was even the main story on their prime time news program, with many journalists suggesting the Czech government will take action against Betsson.

With the Czech republic set to enter the EU it looks increasingly difficult for their government to resist the changes which will inevitably occur in their betting markets."

Sportingoptions report their first one million bets day

Kevin Griffiths Sportingoptions' MD reported that on Saturday 10th they matched one million bets for the first time. He also told us that they had a record month for commission in March.

New PDA interface for Sportingoptions

Sportingoptions is launching its new mob website this week, which will allow clients to place bets via their PDAs straight into the exchange. Other functionality includes viewing a/c info and matched and unmatched bets and p&ls. So mobile is compatible with the cHTML browser in use on most smart phones, smart communicators and mobile pdas. Sportingoptions commented:

"Our technical team have put a lot of effort into the development of the Sporting Options mobile website and we believe that it gives our clients the fastest exchange betting available via PDAs"

Betfair sign MoU with the FA

Betfair has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the FA. The MoU will operate in the same manner as those previously agreed with the Jockey Club, the ATP, the Darts Regulation Authority and the ICC.

Betfair's adverts

No doubt frustrated by the media's failure to report their side of the Fallon and Fox cases, Betfair have taken matters into their own hands and taken out a series of full page adverts to put their case. I was going to put them in this newsletter, but the files were quite big. If you do want to see them you can do so here link

Betfair have an interesting corporate video which was shown at the recent Masterclasses. If you missed these but want to have a look at the video, and see some of the people behind Betfair explaining their vision, follow this link: http://www.betfairpromo.com/demo1/videos.html

TAB go on the offensive against exchanges

TAB, the Australian equivalent of the Tote, has run a series of adverts calling for the banning of betting exchanges. They argue that betting exchanges enable individuals to operate as unlicensed bookmakers, that they cause integrity issues by enabling competitors to bet against themselves, and that they are responsible for an anticipated explosion of problem gambling. Betfair who are actively seeking a license in Australia accuse TAB of ignorance and hypocrisy fuelled by their commercial desire to maintain their monopoly. Betfair's responses can be seen in full in the Announcements section of their forum.

IBAS rule on Gary Jules

In the February issue of BEN I reported on the controversy surrounding Betfair's Christmas number 1 single market on Betfair. The problem resulted after Betfair introduced "Michael Andrews featuring Gary Jules" as a runner and voided all bets which had previously been matched on "Gary Jules". Unhappy Gary Jules backers complained to IBAS, the Independent Betting Arbitration Service, who have recently announced their decision.

If I had not read about this ruling on the Betfair Forum I may not have found out about it, I have found no reference to it in the Racing Post and Betfair have in no way publicised it. I contacted IBAS asking for a copy of the ruling but they explained that rulings are confidential between the person making the complaint and the bookmaker at whom the complaint is directed. When I pointed out that someone had copied the ruling onto the Betfair Specials Forum they agreed that as it had now been in the public domain, there was no reason why it should not be reproduced here, subject to them checking the accuracy of the posting, which they have done and it can be read in full below.

In summary, IBAS ruled that Betfair were wrong to void the original Gary Jules bets and instructed Betfair to pay backers what they would have won from their own resources. This is when it gets interesting, because Betfair's interpretation of how they should compensate backers appears to have been generous over and above the call of duty.

Take the example of an imaginary trader who backed Gary Jules to a stake of £20 at odds of 30. He then lays the bet to the same stake at odds of 28. The combined impact of these two bets would be as follows:

If the bets on Gary Jules had not been voided this person would have won £40, therefore it would be reasonable to expect that this is the amount that Betfair should have paid out to this punter. However, Betfair paid out all back bets and ignored any lay bets, with the result that this imaginary punter would have been compensated to the tune of £580, not the £40 that he might have expected. Delighted backers were queuing up on the forum to share their good news. Downandout was one of the lucky ones:

"WOW!?! £1222 been placed in my account!?! Thank you Betfair - I didn't personally feel aggrieved at the original decision, though I could see how others would if they had got the big prices (I got similar to what it later drifted to anyway, prior to being backed in again). Xmas really has come early this year!......Couldn't even remember how much I'd put on it, and it was only a cover bet anyway... So there is a thing called 'free money' after all!"

This really was a very generous gesture by Betfair, and on behalf of all the beneficiaries (sadly not including me!) I applaud them. But what is puzzling is why they were quite so generous, when they did not need to be. The imaginary punter above would have been more than happy with £40, and downandout clearly was not expecting the amount he got. Betfair are not commenting any further about this case, however I spoke to Chris O'Keefe the Chief Executive at IBAS who confirmed that the decision to pay out in this way was Betfair's, it was not stipulated by IBAS. How much has this cost Betfair? Again no_one from Betfair is commenting, although anyone who had a close look at the market info at the time would know. Estimates on the forum range up to £80k.

Whilst many punters involved in this market were outraged by Betfair's actions and their attitude in the immediate aftermath of the case, they seem to have more than forgiven them now. After taking a battering over this issue, Betfair have emerged with considerable credit, not only for the generous way in which they have settled, but also by paying everyone involved in the market, regardless of whether they made a claim or not.

The IBAS ruling follows below:

Where there is no official or published list of runners for an event then there is inevitably an opportunity for confusion and dispute. For such events there in an onus on bookmakers punters and exchange operators to ensure that the selections they lay or back are correctly identified and reflect their intentions.

In this case the market was on the Christmas No. 1 record single. Betfair argue that because it was headed "who will be the UK Number 1 single" then the market was for the artist, not the record. If the proposition had read "who will have the UK Number 1 single" then they would have had a point but, as written, the proposition could equally as easily be read as meaning "What will be the UK Number 1 single".

It is also the case that the accepted convention in the UK is that the singer of a record almost always is credited with the record, not the composer or, as in this case, the composer who was also playing the piano.

This dispute concerns Betfair's decision to void bets placed on "Mad World" by Gary Jules when the record company that had released the single bowed to pressure from the composer/pianist and decided to "re-brand" the record as being by M Andrews featuring G Jules. As Betfair acknowledge, all that changed was the description of the record, not the record itself, nor the person singing.

If it had turned out that Jules had not recorded any single for the Christmas market then those who had backed him thinking that he was the artist on Mad World would have been mistaken and, in our opinion, losers as the market was ante-post and all-in, run or not. As we noted earlier in markets where the list of possible runners is not official then there is no guarantee that all quoted participants will take part. That is a risk punters take when playing such markets.

Presumably because they were acting in the belief that the market was for the artist and not the record, Betfair introduced "Mad World by M Andrews feat G Jules" as a new runner for the event. They were then alerted by clients that this was, in fact, the same record as Mad World by G Jules. What is not clear to the Panel is why, at that point, Betfair did not either withdraw the new entrant and void trades on it or else merge them with the Mad World/G Jules entry. Voiding bets which had stood for some time in favour of those struck within the previous day or so is hard to explain, particularly as there must have been a far greater trade on the old description of the record.

If this had been a dispute between a bookmaker and a punter there would probably have been a dialogue between layer and backer as to what had happened. It is hard to think that either side would have wanted the bet voided because the record company's billing of it had changed and it would have been equally hard for IBAS to have approved such action. It is also, of course, quite possible that those who had laid Mad World/G Jules on Betfair would also have agreed that the records were one and the same and that wagers stood.

They did not have that option, of course, because Betfair announced that all bets on Mad World/G Jules were being ruled void. By doing so they removed any liability from both backers and layers. There is therefore an argument for saying that as backers would not have lost if Mad World/G Jules had not been the Christmas No. 1 then they cannot win when it did. That is something the panel have considered but as with any commercial organisation Betfair has a duty of care to its customers and, in our opinion, they did not exercise that duty correctly in this case. Because of that, and since it would be unfair to reinstate bets and penalise layers:- who may have laid other runners in the market in the belief that they had been freed of their Mad World/G Jules liabilities and in any case had no input into the decision to void:- the Panel rule that Betfair should rescind the voiding of the bets placed by backers of Mad World/G Jules and pay out in full from their own resources.