FAQs
Here are some frequently asked questions about the Betfair Group Ltd.If you have any queries which are not answered here then send an email to: corporate@betfair.com
Background Information
Q. What is Betfair?
A. Betfair is the UK's largest online betting company and has an established gaming portfolio for sports betting, poker and casino. It is a registered bookmaker in the UK with additional licences in Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy and Malta. In sports betting, it launched the world's first successful betting exchange in June 2000.
Q. What is a Betting Exchange?
A. Based on the New York Stock Exchange model where traders buy and sell commodities or financial instruments, a betting exchange is a bookmaker which allows customers to ask for their own odds and take both sides of the bet. Betfair's cutting edge technology means that, by matching two counterparties with directly opposing views in real time, the exchange can manage 'risk' perfectly. As a result, we make money through charging a small commission (between 2%-5% for over 99% of all customers) on winning bets, rather than the traditional bookmaking model of offering odds and having to factor in a profit margin into those odds. Our system means better odds are often available to all customers.
Q. When did it start?
A. The company formed in the summer of 1999 and Betfair.com launched to the betting public in June 2000. It was the brainchild of Andrew Black, a former professional punter and derivatives pricing modeller in the City of London, who joined together with Edward Wray, a former JP Morgan Vice-President, to start the business. Andrew (known as 'Bert') remains as a non-executive director while Ed is non-executive Chairman.
Q. Who owns Betfair?
A. Betfair is a privately-owned company with a range of shareholders.
Q. Have you won any awards?
A. Betfair is the only betting company to have won the prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise - a feat it acheived for Innovation in 2003, and then repeated in 2008 for International Trade. No other gaming company in the world has acheived this level of state recognition. We are also the only company to have twice won the 'Company of the Year' award from the Confederation of British Industry - in 2004 and 2005.
Business Metrics
Q. How many customers do you have?
A. In September 2008 we signed up our 2,000,000 registered customer. Over 600,000 have been active in the last six months.
Q. Where do your customers come from?
A. They come from over 140 different countries and on any one day over 50% of new registrations come from outside the UK and Ireland. Our international customers account for over 40% of our revenue.
Q. What do your customers bet on?
A. Betfair offers a range of betting and gaming products. For sports betting there are over 50 different sports on the exchange, covering events from 122 different countries. On average we offer 9,700 markets each week and, along with established sports, these include a large range of other subjects such as politics, reality TV and financial markets. Betfair Poker was launched in 2005 and operates on its own platform. It is the exclusive online sponsor of the World Series of Poker Europe event. For more information, visit www.betfairpoker.com. Betfair Casino has the 'Zero Lounge' - the only online casino in the world without a house edge - as well as a normal casino lounge and the Betfair Arcade games product. We also offer a set of unique Exchange Games offered by www.betfairgames.com.
Q. Where are you based?
A. Betfair HQ is situated in Hammersmith, London. We have a large helpdesk and call centre in Stevenage (about 40 miles north of London) as well as two large operational bases in Malta - home of our international business - and Hobart in Tasmania. In addition to this we have a number of satellite offices around Europe including Spain, Italy, Romania and Germany.
Q. How many staff do you have?
A. Currently 1350 around the world and we are still expanding.
Betfair's Technology
Q. How good is your IT?
A. Betfair's business is founded upon technology which has proven itself to be far ahead of the competition. We successfully complete over 6,400,000 transactions a day - comfortably more than all of Europe's stock exchanges combined - and we have the added burden of a 24/7 operation where settlement is immediate. Oracle view Betfair as one of their top five most important customers in the world today which puts us alongside the likes of eBay and Google.
Q. What sort of volumes do you deal with?
A. At peak times Betfair's exchange has matched over 3,186,000 bets a day. It serves over 4.6 billion page requests per week and 99.9% of all transactions happen in under a second. The technology required to do this is immense and requires significant investment and development time.
Integrity Issues
Q. What is a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)?
A. This is the name we give to an information-sharing agreement signed by Betfair and a sport governing body. It allows us to share certain information about betting patterns and customer behaviour for that particular sport with the regulator. We currently have 44 such agreements with many international sporting bodies and aim to cover every betting market we offer in the future. Betfair is the only betting operator in the world to offer this level of protection to sports bodies.
Q. How do you monitor betting?
A. We have a 40-strong team of specialists who monitor the betting patterns across all the betting markets offered by Betfair. They use a combination of software tools and experience. As the details of every bet are recorded, any market can be investigated, current or historic.
Age Verification and Know-Your-Customer checks
Q. Do you have a specific Customer Verification Team?
A. Yes - we have a team of 16 people based in the UK.
Q.How does Betfair prove the identity and age of potential customers?
A. Betfair uses a variety of methods depending on the requirements of the jurisdiction under which we are licensed. These include requesting documentation such as passports or driving licenses, address validation, third party electronic checks and Post Office checks.
Fraud
Q. Do you have a specific Fraud Department?
A. Yes - it has over 30 employees and operates with 24/7 monitoring capabilities.
Q. Is Betfair a member of Gamshield?
A. Yes.
Anti Money Laundering
Q. Do you have a specific Anti Money Laundering Department?
A. Yes - we have a dedicated team who all hold internationally recognised Diplomas in Anti Money Laundering with regionally based Money Laundering Reporting Officers, all under the management of a Group Money Laundering Reporting Officer based in London to ensure a consistent approach globally.
Responsible Gambling Measures
Q. Do you have a dedicated Responsible Gambling Manager?
A. Yes. They work within the Compliance Group.
Q. What player protection tools do you have in place?
A. We provide customers with information about, and links to, the player protection tools available to them. These include Deposit and Loss Limits, Session Timers and Self-exclusion.
Q. What help is there if one of your customers thinks they may have a gambling problem?
A. We believe that the provision of clear, easily accessible information is essential so that customers are able to make informed choices about their gambling. We have links on our site to GamCare, Gambling Therapy and Gamblers Anonymous.
Q. Do you pay anything towards problem gambling services?
A. In the UK we are a member of, and make annual donations to, The GREaT (Gambling Research, Education and Treatment) Foundation. In other jurisdictions we seek to support the research, education and treatment of problem gambling where we can.
Q. Do you offer employees responsible gambling awareness training?
A. Yes - all employees receive responsible gambling awareness training within their first three months of employment. All customer facing employees receive additional more in-depth training which is refreshed annually to ensure their knowledge is kept up to date.
What is Tradefair?
In the autumn of 2007, Betfair launched Tradefair - the first application of its exchange technology outside the betting industry. Focusing on financial markets, Tradefair uses the exchange for products like Hi-Lo, while relying on a white-label partnership for its spread betting product. Tradefair moves the Betfair Group into the online retail financial derivatives market and is expected to achieve FSA authorisation shortly.