Betfair Official Blog

The Betfair Starting Price: It's Alive!

13 December 2007 | About Editor |

In his final launch diary entry, Director of Horseracing Stephen Burn breathes a huge sigh of relief as the Betfair SP finally gets to strut its stuff...

So, the Loki Lab Rat and Nordic trolls have finally emerged from their dark cave, with them and the Betfair SP now seeing the light of day.

At Betfair Towers in Hammersmith, the first markets were loaded on Tuesday evening for Wednesday's card at Southwell. The first horse to win a race with a Betfair SP returned on it was, appropriately enough, Commit To Memory. It's BSP was [4.4] while the conventional SP returned 3-1.

The early signs are encouraging with every horse's starting price being greater on Betfair than the returned industry SP. After a couple of days, the running total shows the prices to be 21% better than the conventional SP and that's after deducting the maximum commission rate of 5%.

The feedback from customers has been very encouraging although it is fair to say that some of our more skilled users are seeing performance-related issues which we're working on to try and correct. The main problems appear to be centred around site speed and it seems as if some customers are witnessing a slowing down while others are getting a faster service.

Nevertheless, given the scope for more major 'malfunctions' with any new product release (let alone one as big as this one), the signs are very positive that we've produced something customers want and which puts the punter first.

We'll continue to make improvements to the product and welcome customer feedback for how best we can do this. But, please don't expect much work to be done early next week.

The guys behind the Loki project, as the Betfair SP team was codenamed, will be hitting rural Sussex on Monday for an away day at the races. We're sponsoring the card and letting the 'geeks' out to play. Proceedings open up with the 'Steve High Is Juvenile Novices' Hurdle' and close with the 'Bert It Was My Idea Handicap Hurdle'. If you're at the track please stop by and say hello - until then I'm off for a lie down in a darkened room.

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