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The Sporting Exchange, a
privately-held U.K. company, operates its Internet-based betting
exchange under the name
Betfair.
Betfair has an annual revenue in excess of US$1bn and ranks sixth on
the Power 25 ranking of e-gaming businesses complied by eGaming
Review. Betfair and Yahoo! have formed a strategic venture to
offer the Betfair online betting exchange services in the mass
market under the name
Yahoo! Betting.
Betfair employs around 450 people in its Hammersmith headquarters,
matches millions of bets every day (up to 12,000 every minute) and
has over 300,000 registered customers.
ZDNet UK said of this development:
Yahoo Betting, as the site will be known, is due to launch in
March and is designed to take the advanced features available on
Betfair's main site and make them accessible to a Yahoo's user base.
The exchange will be accessible through the sports and finance
sections of Yahoo as well as from other areas across the portal.
"By creating a customized Betfair exchange for the Yahoo platform,
we are offering the revolutionary dynamics of an exchange to a wider
audience in a more traditional and customer-friendly way," said
Betfair's chief executive Stephen Hill.
Betfair's model applies the collaborative power of the Internet to
the traditional bookmaking model by allowing punters to bet at odds
set by other gamblers rather than a bookmaker.
The model was slow to take off at first, with the fledgling site
matching less than ?50,000 of bets a week in its first month. A year
later that figure had grown to over ?1m a week and it now stands at
some ?50m.
eGaming Review says of its ranking of Betfair:
Why number six? As the firm that single-handedly brought in the
biggest innovation in e-gaming since the online casino, it has
caused many sleepless nights at European and Australian bookies.
They invented the betting exchange sector, and four years on they
still hold 90% of the betting exchange market. Betfair has seen
competitors come and go and got top marks for influence.
The combination of the innovative, low-cost wagering method
pioneered by Betfair with the enormous mass market reach of Yahoo!
should soon result in creating the world's largest online sports
betting operation. |
