Betfair Exchange January Newsletter: Football and politics will be huge in 2024

• Exchange aiming for another fantastic year

• Football and Politics to be big in 2024

• How to make the most of Betfair's historical data

Cricket took centre stage during a fantastic 2023 for the Betfair Exchange. The sport extended its lead over Football, finishing the year on over £35bn for matched volume.

Two IPL match odds markets managed to break the £200m mark but the World Cup made the headlines after India lost to Australia in the final, despite one of the most dominant tournament performances in recent years.

With Euro 2024 to come this summer, a US Election and potentially a UK general election to close out 2024, cricket may not be as dominant this year.

Politics still holds top spot for the single biggest Exchange market for matched volume.

Building on a brilliant year

From a product perspective, some strategic investments in infrastructure led to one of the best years on record for stability in 2023, and we'll be continuing the work this year to ensure we offer the best possible service going forward.

It wasn't all under the hood product enhancements though, as we launched Betfair Beacons in December 2023, a simple but informative way of highlighting price moves for mobile and desktop customers.

The Beacons do not provide any information that isn't already available (all the data is in Betfair Exchange market graphs and price ladders) but they do pull it all together and make it possible for you to process it at a glance.

Improvements were also made to the Decimal Data Cricket feed to improve accuracy whilst new tracks were added to the Horse Racing GPS feed provided by Total Performance Data including some prestigious UK and US tracks such as Aqueduct, Keeneland and for 2024 Newbury.

This year we're hoping to tackle the in-play Football experience starting with some important improvements to our VAR management process.

Football VAR changes

In the coming weeks, we'll be introducing significant improvements to our VAR processes to create a fairer experience for our customers. Full details will follow as we are still ironing out the minor details, but the main improvement will give more protection to our market makers as we improve the voiding process following goals, penalties and red cards that are given after a VAR review.

Cricket Webinar Part 2 - Coming soon!

Part 2 of the trilogy looking at "Forecasting for Cricket Markets" will be released in the coming weeks. Ian McHale and Muhammad Asif share insight from some of their research on Duckworth & Lewis and explain how they used it to build an in-play model using pre-match factors.

Part 1 was an introduction to cricket and was gratefully received by those who have watched it. It is still available here.

If you'd like to get a head-start on Part 2, here is some of their published research on Cricket forecasting available on various academia sites:

McHale, I. G., & Asif, M. (2013). A modified Duckworth-Lewis method for adjusting targets in interrupted limited overs cricket. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, 225(2), 353-362.

Asif, M., & McHale, I. G. (2016). In-play forecasting of win probability in One-Day International cricket: A dynamic logistic regression model. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FORECASTING, 32(1), 34-43.

Asif, M., & McHale, I. G. (2019). A generalized non-linear forecasting model for limited overs international cricket. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FORECASTING, 35(2), 634-640.

Asif et al. (2021). A short comparative study on modified Duckworth-Lewis methods. PLOS ONE

New Golf Line Markets

As player-based prop betting continue to grow across the industry, we will be trying out new golf markets in the coming weeks. We plan to offer round score, static line markets for six to eight players per tournament, where you can speculate on whether they will score over/under the given even money line (e.g. 70.5). Markets will be pre-play only and offered on each of the four rounds which will be loaded following settlement of the last round.

We will let public interest dictate which players are offered and will likely feature players from the top end of the market plus Tiger Woods.

Newbury Added to Betfair GPS API

Total Performance Data (TPD) has recently added Newbury to their extensive list of racecourses which can benefit from low latency in-play GPS data. This data is available via vendor apps Betmover, Bet Angel and Gruss Betting Assistant. It's also available to Direct API users accessing the feed. You can request direct access and more information by contacting BDP@betfair.com

Data

Betfair Historical data - all sports

January can be a good month for deciding where to devote time and resources for the coming 12 months. Whether you decide to concentrate on existing strategies or try something new, we wanted to remind you that extensive historic data dating back to May 2015 is available here.

This service provides time-stamped Betfair Exchange data for purchase & download to registered Betfair customers. Australian/New Zealand market data is available from October 2016 only.

Using this data, you can:

• Access historical Betfair Exchange price & market data
• View details of historical market settlements
• Custom filter data prior to download
• Backtest your strategy before going 'live'
• Experiment with new sport/market types

There are three plans to choose from basic, advance and pro which are priced accordingly. If you are looking to purchase in bulk we do offer a discount. This can be agreed by emailing the BDP team on BDP@betfair.com with the selected months/years you are looking to purchase.

For further information you can access the Historical data homepage via this link.

Timeform data - Greyhounds and Horse Racing

Timeform have been industry leaders for horse racing analysis and data in the UK and Ireland since 1948, and are globally renowned for accuracy, credibility and judgement. With this long history of racing analysis and data they are able to provide you with key data points you can add into your modelling.

There are two package tiers, Standard data and Premium data.

Standard data

• Core pre-race, race-day and post-race data: to power race cards and results
• Timeform Analyst Verdicts, including 1-2-3s a race summary and selections by a Timeform Analyst
• Star Ratings: easy to understand ratings for the chances of each runner
• Horse-by-Horse comments: contextualized summary of each runner
• Smart Stats: informative statistics for horses, trainers, jockeys and more
• Plus more

Premium data

• Pace Maps: data to predict likely pace and early positions of runners
• Timefigures: Time-based performance ratings
• Timeform Ratings: master, adjusted and performance ratings calculated by an experienced team of handicappers
• Timeform Flags: premium insight around horses, trainers and jockeys
• In-Running and Pace Hints: comments and hints about in-play odds and pace scenarios
• Timeform Sectionals: race-level sectionals of a race
• Timeform Race Report and Performance comments: detailed analysis of the race and performances available within one working day of the race
• Plus more

As Timeform is part of the overall flutter brand, discounts apply to Betfair customers looking to use their services. If you would like more information visit the link or contact BDP@betfair.com or your account manager.

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