Bet Exchange News - February 2004

More information about many of these stories can be found in the excellent Cuttings Library of www.racingpost.co.uk

Betdaq on the move wins major award

BETDAQ - The Betting Exchange has won a major prize at the O2 Digital Media Awards. The fast growing betting service landed the Nokia sponsored gong for BEST NEW WIRELESS APPLICATION.

Launched just over two years ago, BETDAQ already has over 25,000 customers from more than 100 countries around the world. This year it will handle in excess of EUR1 billion worth of bets. This growth has been achieved largely through the company's website at www.betdaq.com but it has also been working for some time on a wireless application enabling those customers to place bets and monitor their positions from pocket as opposed to desktop devices.

"What we do is simple," said BETDAQ Director, Rob Hartnett, accepting the award. "We enable our customers to pit their wits and put their money down against fellow sports fans from around the world. To make it simple though, is actually very complex."

"This is bleeding edge technology, and we, together with our sister company, New Symphony Technologies, have looked at various methods and numerous platforms for delivery beyond the normal channels of a betting service. We feel that the service we have now is worthy of extended roll-out, and it is a great honour that the judges should share that view, particularly when viewed alongside such giants as Microsoft."

Betfair sign anti corruption agreement with more sports bodies

The ATP (men's tennis) the ICC (international test match and one day cricket) and the DRA (Darts Regulation Authority) have all signed memorandums of understanding with Betfair , along the same lines as their arrangement with the Jockey Club. This means that Betfair will co-operate with these sports bodies in the event of suspicious betting patterns, which will make it more difficult for corrupt participants to benefit personally from match fixing.

Platinum Racing boss faces Jockey Club probe

The Jockey Club's Security Chief Paul Scotney made an early impact in his new job by announcing that Miles Rodger, a director of Platinum Racing Club would face an investigation under the new Rule 247. This states that owners, training and stable staff must not lay their own horses on betting exchanges. The Jockey Club indicated that six Platinum Racing horses have been investigated following suspicious betting patterns. Rodger faces charges for laying two horses, Uhoo-magoo which lost at Redcar after drifting from 11-2 to 9-1 and Million per cent which lost at Wolverhampton after having drifted from 4-1 to 6-1. In October Mr Rodger claimed that he was the victim of a witch hunt and unsuccessfully sought to sell the Platinum Racing Club.

Betfair return £200k to defrauded pension fund

Disgraced company director Andrew Petrie was revealed to have lost over £1million playing Betfair over a 21 month period. Betfair agreed to refund the £200,000 they made in commission from Petrie during this time to the company pension fund from where he had stolen the funds. Mark Davies told the Racing Post:

"There is no obligation for us to do so, but because people with money in a pension fund have been defrauded and beca u se we can tell exactly what Andre Petrie has done with a part of that money that he spent on Betfair , we will return all the funds that ended up in our account to their rightful place."

Betfair strikes licensing deal with South Africa 's racing authorities

Betfair agrees to make payments to Phumela-Gold Enterprises, the organisation which dominates South African horse racing, their first international agreement to date. They also have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the South African Jockey Club, allowing them access to Betfair 's audit trail in the event of suspicious betting activities.

Fred Done and Bet365 offer lay bets

No doubt prompted by the growing success of the betting exchanges, Fred Done and Bet365 become the first mainstream bookies to offer customers the option of laying a football team.

"We are simply offering our customers the combined odds for a team and the draw. We aren't trying to compete with the likes of Betfair. We want to remain distinctly a bookmaker rather than an exchange and we will be retaining the minimum trebles stipulation because we don't want people using the service to trade arbs from the exchanges. But this facility gives our customers an extra service that they clearly like and we will definitely be carrying on with it."

Man City prove there's no such thing as 'free money' on the exchanges!

"This result will ruin some people's lives" was the dramatic conclusion of one Betfair forum user after 10 man City turned round a 3-0 half time deficit to beat Spurs in last week's FA Cup replay. He could be right, this result was an absolute disaster for a number of exchange users. It cost one Betfair user £1,756 after he laid City at odds of 440 to win just £4! An enormous £200k was also matched on Spurs at odds of 1.01, which means that many punters will be nursing horrendous losses. This is a timely reminder to anyone who thinks they can make profits by laying these massive outsiders. As a strategy it may work for a while, and you may see your account steadily build up, but sooner or later there is likely to be a sting in the tale. There are plenty of ways to make money on exchanges, but this is not one of them.

Betfair edge towards the first £5m soccer match

The recent Carling Cup tie between Arsenal and Middlesbrough saw Betfair match bets worth a record £4.66m. What seems to have generated so much interest was the speculation over the quality of the team that Wenger would field. Different views on this resulted in giant swings in the odds, for example Middlesbrough traded from a high of 7.0 down to as low as 4.3 before the match. Arsenal on the other hand drifted from 1.41 down to 2.06 due to the inclusion of a number of relative unknowns in the team.