Tag Archives: monopolies
User revolt against the de facto monopolies in prediction markets?
InTrade (in the U.S.) and BetFair (in the U.K.) are de facto monopolistic, real-money prediction exchanges. Will those monopolies spur users to revolt? Will we see an open-source movement in prediction markets? That’s the question I asked privately to some of our good friends. The guys admit they don’t have the first clue, but are [...]
“BetFair’s de facto monopoly will eventually end…”
I agree with the second paragraph —but maybe not with the thesis of the post.
The Guardian now treats BetFair as a monopoly.
- The Guardian on the BetFair premium charges, the privatization of the BetFair forum, and BetFair’s monopoly. – [Our previous story.]
- The Financial Times on the BetFair prediction market(s) about the next UK general elections.
BetFair impose new “Premium Charges”, and their very active traders are up in arms. – Plus, do BetFair gag the critics?
My analysis of this PR debacle:
BetFair has a very complex information technology system, which is very costly, making BetFair less profitable than the fixed-odds betting operators (the big British bookmakers). They attack the problem with a dual approach: they try to lower the IT costs associated with each bet transaction (see FlyWheel Lite), and they [...]
InTrade-TradeSports has a web server misconfiguration problem, and CEO John Delaney has a character problem.
As I wrote at the time, the InTrade-TradeSports websites were unavailable, last Friday, August 29, 2008, during a good part of the morning.
InTrade-TradeSports is not only an event derivative exchange, but also a webspot that non-trading people often consult to get the latest market-generated probabilistic predictions. Last Friday, in addition to the traders, many people [...]
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