Ed Murray in a comment on Midas Oracle:
If you have say a match odds market for a football match, having a selection of buttons around it that would open up a number of different radio stations with just one click would be a great idea, and miles cheaper, and more effective, than running a BF radio station. Imagine you have a number of buttons where with one click, the first would open up Talksport, the second would open up Radio 5 Live etcetera. All these are free, streamed content, but as well as boosting the audience for these stations, it would make the market/match odds page more of a valuable destination for punters during live matches. A match odds market could become a one stop shop not just for the odds, but as part of an entertainment product, and it would cost next to nothing to do this. I’m looking at the Kohclschreiber v Ferrer market at the mo, the only link is to “Live Scores & Stats”, which have only one problem, they are about five minutes behind live.
There are so many things that can be done with match odds markets pages. These are the main ones that people look at. Its a big, big wasted opportunity at the mo. I think BF radio is a complete waste of money, and tbh, I can’t even tell how to load it up from looking at the site right now. (I’m sure the team working on it work very hard, but much more entertainment can be generated much more easily and cheaply, than by building a whole radio station and running it).
I agree at 75%.
Ed, take a look at HubDub.
And what do you make of their BetFair blog?
I’ll tell you later about my views and projects on prediction market journalism —and I hope to receive feedback from you and all the other Midas Oracle people.
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Medemi on
There was a massively popular website called http://www.tv-links.co.uk, which neatly categorised many tv shows and films, so you could search for your favourite show (lets say ‘Friends’) by clicking on “Friends” in the main menu, and then clicking on the episode you would like to watch, once a sub-menu opened up.
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The website provided near instant access to many popular films and shows, and was in perhaps a grey area legally – it did not host any of this pirate content itself, it merely provided a link to foreign sites which did.
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The website has now been shut down (for now) by the UK authorities, although it does pose a question in itself over whether any actual offence was committed.
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The thing is, it was a massively popular website, just by offering clean, simple user-friendly links, which would open up television shows or movies.
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The BF match odds markets are very threadbare. Just a few clickable icons on the right hand side of the markets with a link to BBC Radio 5, Talksport etcetera, would instantly transform each match odds page into an entertainment portal. It doesn’t even need to be relevant to sport, why not have links to Classic FM etcetera. All these stations are freely available on the web and streamed, and it would use up no bandwidth – as was the case with http://www.tv-links.co.uk . It just opens it up.
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BF radio should be scrapped unless it was launched to try to exist as a radio station in its own right, trying to make a profit. It adds next to nothing to the BF experience for most users.
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The Betfair blog (betting.betfair.com) looks like a waste of space. This article previewing Manchester Utd v Arsenal looks very weak
http://betting.betfair.com/football/premiership/man-utd-v-arsenal-betting-arsenal-your-season-ends-100408.html
The author of it was at Spreadex, so should know that a typical mug punter will be backing the favourite, and backing lots of goals. For him to recommend taking prices off screen is an instant no-no, why lay Arsenal at 5.4 as he recommends, why not put up an offer at 5.2, and wait until shortly before the match starts to see if you can get on at a cheaper price? I find it strange to see someone recommending backing the favourite, and lots of goals, although perhaps the article is aimed at mug punters (?) and probably serves its purpose best if it gets a feel good factor for the readers who are trying to place mug bets.
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Would betting.betfair.com be able to exist in a commercial environment, without being subsidised? It seems very unlikely. The proof in the pudding will be what is the revenue per user figure for people who do read the blog, in comparison to the RPU from people who don’t. The RPU is much higher for people who post on the BF forum, than people who don’t, and only an internal calculation could see if this is cost effective.
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The Annette 15 blog is a good feature, although I personally find it sad that she chooses to be sponsored by BF. She is someone who uses genuine skill to be successful, whereas I feel that if she were skilled in another field rather than poker, she would be quite shocked at the attitudes of Andrew Black in particular. I sat with Black for two hours trying to explain to him why his thoughts on betting (he says he is happy to run markets after results are known, to allow insiders to bet into the BF pool against genuine BF users, that he rejects the saying “if you can’t win you can’t lose”, that he thinks it is better to offer people the chance to bet even if they have no chance of winning those bets, and many other strange policies) are just wrong, and i failed to get through just how wrong I believed he is. After two hours, where I failed to convince him to shut markets once results are known, and failed to convince him why insiders shouldn’t be supported and nurtured, I gave up, at which point he asked me to be the BF “forumite of the month”, which I dismissed out of hand instantly – there is no way I can associate myself in public with BF whilst those kind of decisions are being pushed onto the markets by Black.
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People who use skill on the BF sports exchange run into real problems not only with Andrew Black, but also with the seemingly slightly political nature of the BF integrity team, which in many instances is either pressured to allow betting after the event, paying out of overwhelming ‘gambles’, or settling suspicious matches at a rapid-fire rate, no questions asked, despite the assurances given to me and others by BF key accounts on the 2nd Arguello match last year, and flying in the face of the totally mendacious assurances given by Tony Calvin in the NOTW, and Mark Davies on Channel 4 and Sky Sports News. I don’t think Annette would associate herself with BF if her skill set was in sports rather than poker, and if some of the poker players attracted to BF poker by her name go on to bet on sports, it is a shame that she lends her name as a BF player.
With regards to Hubdub, I don’t like the moral hazard implicit in some of its markets. Whilst something like their “will there be an attempt on Prince Harry’s life in the next few weeks” may not encourage someone to go out and murder Prince Harry, there is a real moral hazard with their “Will Karen Matthews serve a jail sentence in connection with the disappearance of her daughter Shannon?” market.
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Putting in place a system where a juror or a judge could make a huge profit by finding the defendant not guilty, or by putting a community service order in place rather than a jail sentence, looks to be worrisome.
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Exactly this problem has happened with the UK Big Brother markets. The production crew have become more and more aware of the huge money that can be made through editorial decisions, and the 2006 and 2007 series were both plagued with ‘twists’, which conveniently tended to mean that whoever was favourite for the next eviction was suddenly made immune, for no good reason whatsoever. It was often spun with some spurious reason, but the BF markets without any doubt whatsoever in my mind, altered the actual show itself.
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In 2006, the absolutely red hot favourite to be nominated and evicted, Jayne Kitt, was called into the diary room and told she was being made immune from nominations that week as “punishment” for talking about the outside world. LOL. Suddenly the odds on red hot favourite to go, with around $200,000 placed on her at odds on to go, was suddenly immune, and in the end another girl, Nikki Graham, was evicted that week.
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Graham had been one of the stars of the show, and they had had no idea she was vulnerable (she was a love or hate character, so was likely to do well in positive votes but do badly in negative hate votes). Their attempts to reintroduce her a month later caused a firestorm of controversy, as people who had voted originally felt ripped off. Looking back, the suspicious immunity given to Jayne Kitt ended up leading to the hugely damaging media firestorm against the production team for reintroducing an evicted contestant (including letting her have the chance to win). (Being eligible to win of course, because she had been available to back at 999 to 1 on BF as well
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The BF market made someone a hell of a lot of money on Jayne, but it directly led to real damage to the show, and the phone votes for the last series slumped to 2.8million in total. In 2003, there were 17 million votes cast during the series.
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So the conclusion is that prediction markets do impose negative externalities, and at times aren’t appropriate.
Thanks for your take on BetFair radio and BetFair blog.
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Simplicity in web design creates good usability for information website. You’re right.
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Prediction exchanges should link to external resources. Yes.
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The BetFair blogger practice low-quality sports journalism. They should do high-quality prediction market journalism, instead.
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As for betting advice, it’s my view that it is very tricky to provide. I believe that it should become more scientific in the coming years, but that’s a huge endeavor.
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Thanks.
The Betfair blogger articles should be reproduced at the top of the relevant section of the BF forum, in a pinned ’sticky’ thread, which cannot fall down the queue. That would add value to the BF forum. That Man Utd v Arsenal preview could have been copied and put into the BF forum, integrating the content into both the BF blog site, and the BF forum (where I would hazard a guess that a lot more users seem to be,….?).
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They should also allow replies to it, as is the case with articles on most mainstream media websites these days. If I’m brutally honest, that article would have been ridiculed on the BF forum if put in a sticky at the top of the footbal forum, but that isn’t because there is necessarily a nasty culture on there, its because the betting advice in the article was banal cobblers from start to finish.
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The cost of the human capital to write the low quality journalism will be pretty high, in comparison to the value added to the overall BF product. There is no significant extra overhead from publishing the same article on both the BF blog and the BF forum.
@Ed Murray: Thanks for your comment. I do try to think about this issue of prediction market journalism, and it’s not simple straight and simple. I think high-quality journalism is elitist, in that the top 1% media get all the readership and the second tier is struggling. (The BetFair blog is the fourth tier.
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