Why has Betfair become so boring?
January 12th, 2005-
Where are the “Will Alistair Go markets” of today?
There was a time when the hot activity in the political betting markets was on the Betfair betting exchange. This was driven by a series of innovative betting propositions that caught the imagination of punters.
Would Alistair Campbell survive his grilling at the Hutton inquiry?; what were the survival chances of Geoff Hoon?; would Greg Dyke hold onto his job as Director-General of the BBC?; was IDS’s position as Tory leader totally doomed. All these and more were on offer a little more than a year ago.
The exchange came into its own on the day of the “no confidence” vote on IDS. You did not need to watch the news programmes to find out what was going on - all the action was displayed on the moving markets on your computer screen. With an hour before the voting closed the price on David Davis being the next leader suddenly moved out from about 5/2 to 10/1 and all the money started going on Michael Howard. Someone knew something and the cash was piling on.
One market remains from this period - who’ll still be party leaders at the General Election with options of none, Blair, Kennedy and IDs and any combination of the three of them this became the place to punt when Blair was in trouble and when the rumour mill started against Charles Kennedy. It’s still there but there has been nothing new like it for nearly a year.
The Betfair of old would have had well thought out markets on David Blunkett, George Galloway and the Tony Blair/Gordon Brown spat.
For punters the unique betting exchange advantages of being able to back and lay gave an added interest that is simply not replicated by conventional bookies like William Hill.
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What’s happened to the company? Is it trying to be respectable ahead of going public? Or have the brightest market creators gone elsewhere.
Alongside the great political betting markets of old was a good forum - a sort of forerunner for Politicalbetting and a number of those who used to post there now contribute here.
The danger for Betfair is that it is leaving the market wide open for an innovative competitor to take its place. It was the best betting exchange - it’s now the most boring. Let’s hope that some new group can take up the mantle - the success of this site shows there’s a great interest.
Mike Smithson
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I think the problem is the relative lack of interest in political betting. Even the biggest political events of a year will only draw as much as a moderate football match. Though given the low risk of the business Betfair is in, you would think they could take Mike on as an honorary consultant and run the political betting as a small steady sideline!
There is more at stake though (I hope) on these political markets. There are plenty of people I know would gladly pay £100k for a Tory Government, and plenty of people who have paid that more for the Labour one. So you have the policy of people insuring themselves which is not really the case for the Test matches…
I put it down to the action on the tv markets with plenty of turnover.
There wasn’t enough on the weirder political markets.
High rollers needed to change the mind of the betfair mafia, methinks.
There is also a major problem for a betting company in terms of political betting, of the power of insider knowledge. Look at the Tory leadership election (or lack of it) last year as you mentioned. Also how about the sheningans around Michael Martin’s election when a lot of labour MP’s made a lot of money off the bookies by placing bets on.
For Betfair though, that isn’t a financial risk since your bet is matched up with another exchange user, and the exchange itself is not exposed to the result. (There is, arguably, a reputational risk of having such markets up, but it would be a strange set of priorities to have a market for every horse race while considering politics beyond the pale.)
Sorry to post off-topic, but it’s a weakness of the daily blog format that there isn’t a good way to do it…what has happened to the site’s local election results? The updates (courtesy of LDs) seem to have stopped at Christmas?
Nick
Nick, Would any local by-elections have taken place last Thursday? Can’t believe there would have been any between Christmas and New Year….
Re 7: There weren’t any to my knowledge last week.
This week there are contests in Erewash (LD seat) and Hull (UKIP).
BV - I think that it is the reputational risk that has caused the change. The betting exchanges were under huge pressure from the conventional bookmakers and there was a reference in the budget last year to some new Governmental element. In those circumstances the last thing you want to do is to poke fun at ministers and others by allowing punters to bet on their survival.
True. One advantage the conventional bookmakers have is they can turn those types of situation to their own ends, e.g. Ladbrokes (IIRC) allow you to bet that they will obtain a Finnish betting licence - thus hedging the profits they won’t make if they don’t get one!
fair comment mike (9).
not enough comm. - too much aggro I reckon for BF to bother with the more offbeat ‘politicals’.
If they knew there would be 10k in it for them they might think again.
^…above by john…
Interesting thread - but you would have thought with ITV’s ‘Vote for me’ politics idol competition on at the moment one bookies firm might have made some money in a book on the winner of the competition winning a Parliamentary seat.
Could have been a nice tie in with the competition and with the chances of smaller parties and independents winning seats not totally out of the question.
Dan (13) - given the miniscule audience ‘Poll Idol’ is attracting (see Media Guardian), I certainly wouldn’t risk my money. Now if Lorraine Kelly were standing, well, that would be a different story…
6 Nick - you’ve probably seen by now but JIC 13/1/5 - LD gain from UKIP in Hull, Con gain from LD in Earewash.
i wish he would be grabbing my balls