Betfair co-founder Ed Wray announced that Betfair would like to become a part of the starting price mechanism for British horseracing by becoming the wholesalers of the starting price for bookmakers that would take those prices and add their own margin to them.
Speaking at the annual Global Betting and Gaming Consultants conference, Wray said: “The industry needed a starting price system that is representative of the whole market. Exchanges are a big part of that market so we (Betfair) need to be a part of it, as modern punters will not accept a new solution that does not represent the whole betting market.”
He continued: “We trade close to 100 per cent so that is effectively the perfect book. An individual bookmaker can settle on the Betfair Weighted Average Price and then put on whatever margin they want. The bookmaker obviously wants to maximize his profits and at the minute they are settling on SPs with very tight margins.”
The idea has met the criticism of traditional bookmakers. David Hood, Director of Racing and Public Relations at William Hill, said: “Betfair have talked to us before about this idea of wholesale prices. How they can possibly get involved with the SP mechanism when there is no guaranteed amount to lay I don\’t know. With a fancied runner on Betfair you struggle to get £20 on sometimes let alone £1,000 and one of the criteria of the SP is that a horse has to be available to reasonable money.”
At the same conference earlier in the day, Clive Hawkswood, Chief Executive of the Remote Gambling Association, highlighted the spectacular growth rate of remote gambling and pointed out that 25 per cent of levy income already stems from remote betting through British based bookmakers.
Lord Donoughue of the Future Funding Group urged UK horse racing to adopt the Government\’s plan to modernize as soon as possible the regulation of the sport. While Tom Kelly, Chairman of the Association of British Bookmakers, claimed that the levy system is the only realistic way of funding horseracing.
Both Lord Donoughue and Tom Kelly welcomed an idea mooted by Arena Leisure\’s Chief Executive Mark Elliott that racecourses need to embrace the model used at greyhound tracks and run their own Pari Mutuel betting operation.
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