$18,441,883 of bets matched by BetFair for the winner of the 2007 World Cup of Rugby

Posted on October 18, 2007 by Chris F. Masse

Wow. That’s a lot.

BetFair: 2007 World Cup of Rugby

South Africa will win (against England, who did beat France, who did beat New Zealand), BetFair says.

South Africa

On this South Africa chart, spot the volume, lately. Seems like the English have been betting en masse since their team made it to the finale.

About Chris F. Masse

Founder and President of Midas Oracle
This entry was posted in Exchanges & Markets, Market Liquidity, Market Prices & Probabilities and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to $18,441,883 of bets matched by BetFair for the winner of the 2007 World Cup of Rugby

  1. Niall O'Connor says:
    October 18, 2007 at 11:12 AM

    I think it is important to put this figure into perspective.

    $18m is equivalent to 9m GBP. In order to work out the actual sum traded, we need to half this amount, which gives us 4.5m GBP.

    This includes one bet from a mystery gambler of $A5 million ($NZ5.8 million) on New Zealand to win the tournament.

    A proportion of this total will also be accounted for by players trading in and out of positions. Betfair takes a commission of between 2% and 5% from people who win on the market.

    So, as can be seen, the headline figure can be misleading as regards Betfair’s actual profit margin on the match.

  2. Chris. F. Masse says:
    October 20, 2007 at 2:08 PM

    This is from Tony Clare of BetFair:

    Just FYI when a market is partially settled (for instance New Zealand being settled as losers after they got knocked out) the market volume data only includes bets still running. In other words the volume figure shown doesn’t include the bet [Niall O'Connor] mentions (or any other bets on New Zealand or any other team knocked out). Only bets still running on England and South Africa are included in the figures displayed on the site.

  3. Niall O'Connor says:
    October 21, 2007 at 5:24 PM

    Nice of Betfair to clarify matters.

    But why have a running total of bets matched, if in fact it does not include all bets matched?

    I could not find the place on the site where this was explained.

Leave a Reply