⭐ Merited by tyKiwanuka (1)
It's very hard to drag people away from Betfair. They have a monopoly and whoever tried to challenge them in the past, has failed. I still remember back in the days, when they introduced the premium charge and everyone was raging. In the Betfair forums there was a call to leave Betfair and play/trade at Betdaq instead. The traders agreed on meeting in certain markets and do their business there. This worked a bit, but the liquidity was still way below Betfair. And of course you don't want to trade with/against fellow pros, but you want lots of noobs in the market. And these noobs didn't bother to move to Betdaq, because Betfair was still very liquid and these noobs were not affected by the premium charge. So everyone went back to Betfair and Betdaq remained just another exchange with no volume until today.
This is all fascinating to witness. I guess all other betting exchanges have better conditions, better customer support, aren't that greedy etc., but still everyone stays at Betfair or some white label solution of them. I don't think this will change in the foreseeable future, but one can try
With lots of patience.....and money.Great post tyKiwanuka.
We remember when BF premium charge was introduced, it was very messy. But, as you point out, liquidity has its own gravitational field - getting significant parts of large liquidity pools to move somewhere else is a huge challenge.
But we firmly believe that there are a number of important trends (both inside and outside the betting industry) which offer an opportunity to disrupt the stranglehold that Betfair has on betting exchange liquidity. Patience and money are useful, yes, but also a clear idea of what Betfair don't or can't do well (conditions, customer support, commission are not really their weak spots in our opinion).
One thing we certainly agree on - it is a fascinating challenge, and we hope you will be around to watch, comment, and maybe have a bet or two once we've launched
