We have decided that the strategy for the U.S. is to enhance our horse racing offerings and to support our global product development initiatives and therefore, at this point, Betfair wants the U.S. horse racing and engineering teams to integrate more closely with [United Kingdom] operations. Given these changes, Gerard decided to leave the company to pursue alternative opportunities.

More info:

Stephen Burn will now run Betfair’s US horseracing business and Los Angeles office, reporting to Betfair’s UK-based managing director of exchange, Mathias Entenmann.

Ravi Keswani will continue to run the US engineering and product management teams and assume responsibility for the San Francisco office, reporting to Betfair’s London-based chief technology officer Tony McAlister.

If you wanna know what Stephen Burn looks like, here’s an old video:

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MY VIEWS: Some years ago, I e-mailed Stephen Burn (2 or 3 times) for info on BetFair (not knowing that he was not in the PR department), and he graciously forwarded each e-mail to right person at BetFair (instead of killing them, wrong recipient), and my requests got always satisfied. So, to me, the chap sounds like a nice gentleman. As for Gerard Cunningham, I was told by one betting exchange industry insider that he was not very enlightened.

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[*] Technically, David Yu is the upper boss at The Sporting Exchange USA, if I remember well. Go to http://corporate.betfair.com/ for more info. (Well, actually, you won’t find that info there. Their corporate site is quite elliptic.)

Wall Street Journal:

Gerard Cunningham, president of BetFair US, the world’s largest legal online gaming company, isn’t confident that the bills will get their proper hearing in Congress soon.

“The challenges those bills face is the amount of things going on in Washington,” Cunningham said. “They have other concerns now… maybe next year… maybe the year after.”

2010 … 2011

Thanks to Deep Throat for the tip, and for the background on The Sporting Exchange US (TSE US) —their new subsidiary in California (run from London, England?).

BetFair Predicts seems to be a mediocre product, at this time.