[EDUCATIONAL] The Business Model of White Label Betfair Exchanges & More

[tyKiwanuka]

A lot of white label Betfair exchanges have popped up in recent years. This is due to the fact, that Betfair has to strictly follow laws and regulation, while the mirroring exchanges do not (or don't care). I don't know the conditions to be allowed to wear a "powered by Betfair" label, but Betfair itself will happily allow these exchanges to exist, because it brings some volume/liquidity to their markets and thus money in the end.

Betfair had to put a lot of geo-restrictions in place in the last years and as a consequence lost a lot of customers. All these customers - or those that are desperate enough - will have to go via these white label exchanges (WLE) now, in order to participate in trading on the biggest betting exchange in the world.

While the WLE make some money with commission and probably get a few bucks from Betfair, they have their very own and maybe risky business model. Betfair itself has no risk at all, since they just provide a platform, where interested people can bet against each other. But these WLE actually take some risk (20%) on their customer bets and trades.

Lets have a look and visualize. I placed a back for Bundesliga match Frankfurt - Augsburg on Friday in the HT/FT market at Orbit Exchange.



Back HT1/FT2 at odds of 1000 with a stake of 100,- Euro. Now what Orbit does, is, that they only send 80% of that bet to the Betfair market and take 20% of that bet for themselves.

Lets see how it looks at the Betfair market:



You can see my order for odds of 1000, but the stake is only 80,- Euro (some rounding differences I guess, thus it's actually 81,- Euro).

Lets assume that order gets matched and that game will indeed end HT1/FT2. Orbit will then credit 100,000,- Euro to my account and they would have to pay 20,000,- Euro of that from their money (since they took 20% risk on my bet themselves). If I lose the bet, 80,- Euro go to whoever actually matched my order and 20,- Euro will go into the pocket of Orbit Exchange.

Since most people lose with betting, this is a rather safe (additional) business model, but it can be exploited and you as a WLE operator better monitor closely what your customers do.

What does this mean for you as a punter on these exchanges ? Nothing.
What does this mean for your funds on these exchanges ? Be careful and make regular withdrawals.

How to use betting exchanges:

Placing a back bet
Placing a lay bet
The commission
Why you should bet/trade at exchanges

[tyKiwanuka]

Most of the people are probably not familiar with betting/trading on betting exchanges, so I will post some explanatory things, to maybe change that, since exchanges offer great possibilities. If Betfair is not available in your country, you can play at white label exchanges via an agent and with most agents, you can deposit crypto too. You will always play in Euro/USD at the exchanges though.

The big advantage with exchanges is, that you are not only able to place back bets (this is the same as with traditional bookmakers), but you can also place lay bets, which is then betting AGAINST an outcome.

But lets look at back bets first. We have the ManCity – West Ham market for tomorrows game.



The blue fields, and everything that is left hand from them, are odds that are offered for City/West Ham/Draw to win, just like at a normal bookmaker. Lets say I want to bet on City to win:



I am clicking on the blue field for City win. Top right you can enter your stake for that bet and then check on the very left, what would happen for each outcome. After all looks good, I just click on “Place bets” and my order is submitted.

Once the game is finished, the market gets suspended and settled afterwards and you will get your winnings, if you won your bet of course. You will have to pay some commission on your net winnings in a market, but we will talk about that in another post.

I will post some more stuff here in the future. I will try to keep it simple for the start, but if you have any questions or remarks, just ask/post.

[tyKiwanuka]

The opposite of back bets is lay bets, which means you bet against a particular outcome. Laying an outcome requires a little bit of math to calculate the odds and your stakes.



The pink fields and everything right hand from them are orders waiting to get matched from people who want to play back bets. So there are people that want to play PSG @1.40 for a cumulated amount of 3,420 Euro, for @1.41 for 3,728 Euro etc. Then there is people that want to bet on Lyon for odds of 9.00 for 48,- Euro total and people are waiting to get matched for the draw at 6.00 for 566,- Euro. There are more orders to the right, but they are not visible.

Betting against something requires you to calculate the odds - you are playing bookmaker now. The formula is: 1 + (1/(back odds - 1).

Lets say, we want to bet against PSG win, our odds for that would then be 1 + (1/(1.40-1) = 3.50 accordingly.

For your staking, you would now have to think like a bookmaker again. The amount you let your "opponent" stake, will be what you get from him, if he loses his bet. The amount you would have to pay him, if he wins, is his stake multiplied by (odds-1). Lets assume we want to bet against PSG and risk 40,- Euro on that bet. Our lay bet would then be: Lay PSG @1,40 for a stake of 100,- Euro. If PSG wins, we would have to pay 100*(1.40-1) = 40 Euro. If PSG fails to win, we will get the stake of 100,- Euro.



Laying 1.40 for a stake for 100,- is nothing different than playing double chance X2 on Lyon with a bookmaker for @3.50 for 40,- in the end. But you also have the possiblity of laying a correct score, for example the 0-1, and backing and laying on exchanges has other advantages, which I will discuss in some upcoming post.

[tyKiwanuka]

The business model of betting exchanges is commission. They are providing a platform, where people can bet against each other with no house edge. After a market is settled, the exchange takes commission on net winnings – you don’t have to pay commission on losing bets/markets.

At Betfair the base commission is 5%. So, if you win 100,- in a market, Betfair will take 5,- of that and you will get 95,- net win in your account.
The good thing is, you can lower your commission by gaining Betfair points. You will get Betfair points for every bet you place, no matter if it wins or loses, it just has to be matched. The points you gain will determine your discount rate. Your discount rate can go from 2% up to 60%. Lets say we have a 60% discount rate with the above mentioned 100,- net win in a market. Our commission would then be:

100,- x 5% x (1-60%) = 2,-

So from previously 5% we managed to get our commission all the way down to 2%, which is the lowest it can get with Betfair to my knowledge. 

The commission model gives the exchanges a safe way to earn lots of money, they just need volume/turnover (and that is what all other exchanges than Betfair are struggling with). On a Champions League match day, people will have millions of winnings and you can calculate for yourself what 2%-5% of commission means for Betfair then. And you have tennis, cricket, horse racing etc. running all day, where there is good daily turnover always.

The commission aspect with no house edge is very attractive when doing multiple bets (trading) in a market, this will be discussed in another post.

[tyKiwanuka]

As mentioned in the last post, you pay commission on your net win in a market. When placing multiple bets in a market, i.e. doing some trading, there lies the big advantage over playing in a traditional bookmaker. In a traditional bookmaker you would “pay” the house edge with every single bet you place, which means that you have lower odds on average.

The Wolves vs Leicester market for tomorrows match for example. Lets say I want to place a bet on the under pre-match, since I am expecting a slow start and cautious approach by both teams. I am still thinking the game will go over, since after maybe 15 minutes, I expect both teams to open up and get more aggressive, looking to score goals.

On an exchange this is maybe how it would look like, if I decide to jump on the over at minute 15:



5% commission on that, would leave me with around 8.50 net win.

Now with bookmakers I get worse odds for the pre-match under and also for the inplay over at minute 15, maybe 1.83 for the under and 2.35 for the over, if I play at a bookmaker with low house edge.

1.83 on the under for 100,-.
2.35 on the over for 78,-.

This would leave me with a net win of 5.13 net win.

8.50 vs 5.13 looks small, but a) longterm it makes a huge difference and b) if you do 10, 20 or 50 bets/trades in a market the difference will be a lot bigger.

Playing with no house edge and only paying commission on your net winnings is the huge advantage of playing at exchanges.

[tyKiwanuka]

Another great advantage of playing at exchanges is, that you can sort of plan your bets. Similar to crypto exchanges, you can put orders into the market and wait for them to get matched. This is mostly for inplay/live markets, since the odds normally don’t move that much prematch (you can make some bucks with prematch-trading to though).

Lets assume I have some insight during the first half in todays CL match between Dortmund and Paris.  The game started slow and both teams were cautious, but after some time both teams found their rhythm and were able to create lots opportunities to score a goal. The odds for over 0.5 in first half are still not what I want to have, maybe around 1.7. What I can do now, is to put my orders in the market at higher odds and wait for them to get matched. I can put multiple orders into the market and as time goes by and we are nearing halftime, the odds will go up and my orders will get matched subsequently.

These are my orders:



They are hidden somewhere back there, between a lot of other order from different users:



Now all I have to do is wait and hope for a goal after my bet(s) were matched. If a goal is scored before my orders get matched, I will get my stakes back.


There are lots of strategies how to use this feature. What people often like to do, is putting orders in for both players in a tennis match, where the players are pretty evenly matched and some drama is to be expected. The match between and Mayer and Sonego this evening in Rio de Janeiro looks to fit this criteria. I could just place back bets for both players @3,00 for the same stake. If both get matched, I will make a profit, no matter the outcome.

[JackpotRacer]

@tyKiwanuka

why did you stop? I just found your thread and I find it very interesting

are there many WLE s and which are best or at least serious enough that you get you withdrawals?

[tyKiwanuka]

@tyKiwanuka

why did you stop? I just found your thread and I find it very interesting

Hey, thanks for dropping by and the compliment, appreciated I didn't stop, this thread is more on hold, until there is some engagement, feedback, questions, discussions or new developments in this space (like Exbet for example). I think for now I have explained the basics of using a betting exchange and the business model of WLE's. So I was waiting for more interest or me getting more creative again

There is a lot of funny stuff you can do at these exchanges, but it's a bit difficult to understand, when you never used an exchange and also difficult to explain in just written words or with screenshots to a newbie. People are using all sorts of different (trading) strategies to extract some bucks from the markets - with bots, trading software or manually. Trading on an exchange is 100x more fun than just betting with a traditional bookmaker, but I also understand, that a lot of people that just want to place their multi for the weekends football games, so this would always be some kind of a niche/nerdy thread.

are there many WLE s and which are best or at least serious enough that you get you withdrawals?

I only ever used Orbit and Fair999 as WLE's. Fair999 had ultra-risky business model and had to shut down, because people exploited them heavily. The site was still up for some time, but you couldn't get an account there anymore afaik. I never had any problem with Orbit and stayed there until now and didn't look for other possibilities. These exchanges will normally always pay you, because they take no risk themselves. You can compare it with a crypto currency exchange like Binance for example, who just provide a platform for traders to meet and take some fee for it from the trades.
The WLE's - as explained - take some risk of course, but these 20% are still ok from a risk perspective I think and if they see you constantly taking advantage of it, they will surely not pay you. As long as you don't try to cheat them, you should be fine and with them banning bad actors, they should also stay solvent.

But as I said in first post, just regularly withdraw the money you don't need on a daily basis, you never know in this space and better be safe than sorry

[JackpotRacer]

@tyKiwanuka

thank you very much for the detailed answer. We don't find very often people like you to give such good insights of exchanges and why and how to use it. Great attitude!

Just for info I am a risk averse bettor and I prefer pre match trading and I am still in learning phase. To be frank I have problems to find value bets so I am concentrating on pre match trades

IMHO this thread has no  feedback or questions as most of the members here prefer the regular bookie and not exchanges.
I would be interested to understand the reasons as I prefer exchanges and sadly exchanges are not available for every country

I googled Exbet and I saw they are not yet open. I found Brokerstorms which is offering exchanges powered by Betfair with BTC deposits and withdrawals. Though not sure if they can be trusted. Are you familiar with Brokerstorm and their exchanges?

cheers

[tyKiwanuka]

I found Brokerstorms which is offering exchanges powered by Betfair with BTC deposits and withdrawals. Though not sure if they can be trusted. Are you familiar with Brokerstorm and their exchanges?

Yes, for most, if not all, of these WLE, you would have to go via an agent like Brokerstorm for example. This does not sound very attractive and is a hurdle not everyone is willing to jump. On top of that, you would also have to do KYC (with the agent). An agent sounds like a shady person sitting in a dark room under a lamp smoking a cigar In reality these are more or less normal companies, who maybe operate in a bit of a grey-ish area. But a lot of gamblers, even without agent, operate in a grey-ish area themselves, so no reason to worry imo.

If you find a trusted agent, you can have accounts at bookmakers/exchanges, where you normally wouldn't be able to play. There is just a middle-man, who connects you to the bookmaker/exchange and all money transfers are done via him. Please note, that all agents have a minimum deposit, so this is not for punters that play with very small stakes. The minimum is 100,- Euro (or equivalent) for most of them. In Orbit Exchange you have a minimum stake of 7,- Euro then, which has to be considered as well (if you lay a 1.01 for 7,- Euro, you only have liability of 0.07 Euro though, so you can actually play with less than 7,- Euro too).

I don't know Brokerstorm tbh. I have my Orbit account via Bet-Football, but they don't offer crypto payment. Another agent, which I have/had in my portfolio, is BetInAsia, who offer Orbit accounts and BTC payments, so maybe you want to try them.

Pre-match trading is a good way to learn the game of trading, since everything is rather slow and you are not in danger of odds going against you fast. You can stake big-ish amounts, without being too worried. But otoh the markets don't yet have the volume, like they have inplay of course. It gets better nearer to kick-off though. 

A very good pre-match trader is Caan Berry. Not sure, if you are interested in horse racing - I am not - but there is still something to be learnt from him: [Screen Recording] SIMPLE Betfair Trade of £70 PROFIT - Caan Berry

Horse racing is very good sport to trade pre-match, as are the the big football matches (look at correct score market) and probably cricket, but not sure, since I have no idea about cricket.

Which sport are you interested in and want to start learn to trade ?

[Ucy]

It feels really fair.
Haven't gone through the workings of the platform though (even their terms and conditions) to know whether it's really the right platform to bet on.
 Concerning its geo restriction, guess if you are geo restricted in one betting-game, you could switch to another game that is allowed in your country and without the geo restriction. Sometimes like this would work really well on decentralized platform.

[JackpotRacer]

@tyKiwanuka

I asked Orbit about KYC and they said KYC is a must to open an account. As a BTC user I am not very eager for KYC. BTC deposit and withdrawals are accepted

yes Caan Berry is a good one. Horses are not of interest for me. I like Tennis and Soccer. Soccer is IMO better than Tennis for pre match trading

what do you mean with correct score market? I mean do you suggest to look at this market for pre match trading?

Thanks a lot for your patience to answer my questions

[tyKiwanuka]

I asked Orbit about KYC and they said KYC is a must to open an account. As a BTC user I am not very eager for KYC. BTC deposit and withdrawals are accepted

Yes, you will have a hard time to find a Betfair WLE without being forced to do KYC. Even Exbet will have KYC as I learned the other day. You can check out Fairlay, they only do KYC in rare cases, where they suspect fraud/cheating.

I like Tennis and Soccer. Soccer is IMO better than Tennis for pre match trading

Pre-match trading for Tennis is literally not possible, since the markets only fill up very late. The day/night/hours before the match starts, there is very low volume and not much movement - everyone is waiting for inplay The side markets have very few volume even inplay. It's a bit better in the latter stages in a GS or the big Masters, but otherwise it's a weary task.

what do you mean with correct score market? I mean do you suggest to look at this market for pre match trading?

Yep, I recommend to have a look not only at the 1X2 markets, but also at the correct score market for pre-match trading in football. There are quite a lot of traders there even days before kick-off, so you have good chances of opening a trade and closing it again. You can also do cross-trading with the over/under markets - these markets are all dependant - and create some nice free bet scenarios.

[JackpotRacer]

@tyKiwanuka

I have a Fairlay account but IMO you can't compare it to betfair. I don't get used to Fairlay exchange and I am not able to use it as I used once Betfair

regarding Tennis trading I agree.

I will take a look at correct score market as you suggest, but to be frank right now I would not know what to look for but maybe time and watching the pre match moves will tell

cheers

[tyKiwanuka]

I have a Fairlay account but IMO you can't compare it to betfair. I don't get used to Fairlay exchange and I am not able to use it as I used once Betfair

Same here. If you grew up with Betfair, it's very hard to get accustomed to Fairlay and their UI (and I am a bit lazy in that regard as well tbh). And Fairlay has the same problem as all exchanges that are not Betfair or powered by them: low volume.

I will take a look at correct score market as you suggest, but to be frank right now I would not know what to look for but maybe time and watching the pre match moves will tell

Don't rush Take your take to monitor and observe the markets; how they move. With time you will maybe find an angle or certain patterns. If you have good information or insight, you can use this to your advantage as well. Start small and protect your bank, but be prepared to lose money in the beginning - don't get discouraged by it though, hard work will pay off in this business

[buwaytress]

Well look at this, ty, didn't realize you had this thread from before.

I've really liked how Fairlay does its markets -- they're not completely bug-free of course, and until today I still have some unresolved issues with a couple of my bets which refuse to appear in Unsettled (it happened when I tried to set my own markets, support can't fix the visual of it but it's otherwise fine balance wise). We've even got a user danshan who has his own markets, using an app for us to find them.

In the end, though, I still scout for best odds -- and I'm finding that with new bookies entering their market, their offers are these days better than going P2P. Still, creating your own market on Fairlay can be quite fun. Especially when people take it!

[JackpotRacer]

@all

could someone confirm that he has a pre match trading pattern he profited from? I don't ask for the pattern I am only asking if there is someone who is profiting from pre match trading?

cheers

[tyKiwanuka]

In the end, though, I still scout for best odds -- and I'm finding that with new bookies entering their market, their offers are these days better than going P2P.

My "problem" is, that I am doing 95% of my bets inplay these days and 80% of that is trading. Pre-match you will find the same odds or even slightly better odds at bookmakers than at Betfair & Co, but when it comes to inplay and trading, there is no way around Betfair imo. So I am rarely urged to look for other solutions, because Betfair is just #1 for me and no one comes close (yet ?). Only thing I dearly miss at these WLE's is the possibility to use trading software. So weary without it and you have to adapt your trading style a lot.

There is so much more value to be found inplay that I basically don't bother with pre-match bets anymore, unless there is a horribly wrong priced one or if I want to gamble on some multi/system. But each person has his own style of betting and there is a lot of ways to be successful.

I've really liked how Fairlay does its markets -- they're not completely bug-free of course, and until today I still have some unresolved issues with a couple of my bets which refuse to appear in Unsettled (it happened when I tried to set my own markets, support can't fix the visual of it but it's otherwise fine balance wise). We've even got a user danshan who has his own markets, using an app for us to find them.

Yes, I am lurking in that thread, without engaging

[buwaytress]

There is so much more value to be found inplay that I basically don't bother with pre-match bets anymore, unless there is a horribly wrong priced one or if I want to gamble on some multi/system. But each person has his own style of betting and there is a lot of ways to be successful.

I can't really speak to this as I don't really go for in-play, especially not Betfair markets or the like, but I'm sure, since there are humans involved, there is always value to be found (which is really what I do as well, hunt for values, bookies that overextend, price boosts that are 50% more than anything else etc).

It's definitely a style to consider, but I assume it's time-intensive, which I can't accommodate =)

[tyKiwanuka]

I can't really speak to this as I don't really go for in-play, especially not Betfair markets or the like, but I'm sure, since there are humans involved, there is always value to be found (which is really what I do as well, hunt for values, bookies that overextend, price boosts that are 50% more than anything else etc).

There are also lots of trading bots, but they are set up by humans I assume/hope. Every now and then you have a bot go wild, just like can be seen sometimes on crypto exchanges. There is value too in pre-match of course, but I feel more comfortable with inplay nowadays. And from my observations, you will get better odds inplay 90% of the time for what you considered to play pre-match anyway.
You will miss out on some good pre-match bets due to very early goals, but when you get 20-30% better odds 9/10 times, it pays off to wait for higher odds live.

But as you said.....

It's definitely a style to consider, but I assume it's time-intensive, which I can't accommodate =)

.....it's time-consuming. You are waiting like a sniper for opportunities to arise and somtimes you "lie" there like a moron and can't pull the trigger Thats the nice thing with pre-match betting. You can place your bets and just go away and check the results later. It all has its pros and cons.