Betfair Official Blog

The Betfair Starting Price: the Details Revealed

22 November 2007 | About Editor |

In his third launch diary entry, Betfair's Director of Horseracing Stephen Burn discovers that Warwick Hunt is the talk of the Tyne and finally 'fecks off home' after the roadshows...

"I've never met one of our customers before," said one of the senior members of our engineering team on tour with the Betfair roadshows, "are they all like him?"

The "him" is gentle Geordie, Mr Warwick Hunt, the foghorn on the Tyne who livened up a wet Tuesday in Newcastle with his colourful candour...

"If yer think anybody's ganna pay that sort o' money fur that, yer mistayken," declaimed Mr Hunt, part way through a demonstration of the betting application linked to Timeform-i.

"But we're not asking anyone to pay for it, it's currently being given away as part of the form product," say I.

"Ah, that's alreet then, but I still divunt think anybody's ganna use it."

Welcome to Newcastle.

Mr Hunt will be known to regulars of Betfair's racing and betting forums. For those not familiar with his work, a current thread title he's initiated should give a flavour: "will the jock on Angelina Jolly come from behind?"

Meanwhile, Scotland's self-appointed forum daddy is Mr Feck N. Eejit. On Monday night, in Edinburgh, the 'N' stood for 'no show' as Mr Eejit's health problems prevented him from travelling to the event from his Glasgow tenement. He was much missed.

In his absence, it was left to his friend, Mr Duncan Disordli, to come up with the sort of idea that makes a wet night in the Scottish capital well worth the while.

"If you're offering a simple SP service," says Mr Disordli, "you should have an option to back or lay the unnamed favourite."

Simple. Obvious. But something none of us at Betfair Towers had thought to do. A good idea and one we'll take away and try and work into the new system, although the techies say it might not be that easy. Thanks, Mr D.

So, the new system. Here goes...

From next month we'll be giving customers the opportunity to back or lay a horse at SP. There'll be guaranteed matching in all but the rarest of circumstances, no stakes limits and the option to set price limits should punters wish.

As an added feature, we'll also be introducing something known internally as 'bet persistence'. This allows customers to have their bets automatically turned in-play if they've not been matched before the off.

Originally conceived as a concept for attracting new customers to Betfair, the SP facility looks like it's also going to appeal to the savvy, more sophisticated users if the recent roadshows and customer testing sessions are any guide.

There are several features to the new product that customers can opt into by clicking a series of check boxes above the market view or listed under more options. These include displaying the predicted SP on Betfair from the moment a market begins to trade right up to the off of the race. For new customers a simple interface showing 'back only' current odds or SP buttons will be displayed.

The new Betfair SP market will run separately from the main exchange market up until the point of reconciliation at the start of the race. At the off, the backers and layers of SP bets will be matched with each other and with exchange backers and layers to determine the accurate price of the Betfair SP. This will then be displayed within a few seconds of the off as soon as the race is turned in play.

For customers wanting a high degree of detail they can have it - the SP can be returned with upto six decimal places. For the vast majority, two decimal paces will suffice and this is what will be displayed on the site.

One important feature of the SP bets to note is that once placed, they can't be cancelled. However, price sensitive customers can set limits to their bets so they'll only be struck if a required price has been matched.

For instance, someone wanting to back a horse early in the morning before heading off to work can say they'll take the Betfair SP as long as it is 4.5 or above, knowing it'll only be matched if the SP is that price or bigger.

We anticipate that the returns will compare favourably with the current industry SP and from the outset the full returns for every horse will be displayed on the site.

Any customer not interested in the SP function can simply leave the tick box unticked and they'll never see it.

In the coming weeks full details of how the new products work will be made available and all existing customers of Betfair will be contacting and made aware of these changes.

For those not wanting to wait until then, check out the various threads on the Betfair forum featuring the very best of the works of Warwick Hunt and Feck N. Eejit. Not only do they contain some enlightening thoughts on the usefulness or otherwise of the Betfair SP but they'll also give you an insight into the finer workings of the minds of some of our best customers.

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