Thanks for our faithful reader for the links.

Guardian:

Share buybacks are a popular tactic for mature businesses and are typically employed when companies cannot think of efficient ways of deploying spare cash. However, Betfair was sold to investors in October as a company that had strong growth opportunities.

More here and here and here and here.

- BetFair to increase charges on big hitters. (Via OddsFutures.)

Previously: BetFair employees believe that David Yu and the other top brass are a bunch of schmucks who are incapable of delivering leadership. — [NEWS]

- Mathias Entenmann
- Charlie Palmer
- Robin Osmond
- Lee Cowles
- Tim Phillips
- Emily Foge
- Rob Glynne
- Alex Deacon
- Tony Rigby
- Don Fotsch.

And I add:

- Tony Clare
- Mark Davies
- Mike Robb.

UPDATE: The exodus continues.

I like an analogy of Playstation versus Wii. Just like Wii opened up video gaming to a mass audience including women, I think there’s room for simpler/friendlier sites like smarkets that can open up gambling to a much wider audience than sites like betfair that seem to cater mostly to men familiar with gambling jargon.

4 more important factors:

1. Robin Hanson, James Surowiecki and Justin Wolfers have exaggerated the usefulness of the prediction markets, hence putting the bar too high.
2. Robin Hanson, James Surowiecki and Justin Wolfers were clearly the wrong leaders. They pushed the enterprise prediction markets, which proved to be a mirage. John Delaney was also the wrong leader to follow. TradeSports-InTrade was a big operator; InTrade is a niche player. All the leaders failed. All of them. Including David Pennock (who has the backing of an Internet giant). On top of that, the prediction market people let the San Francisco clown pollute our turf; he has now decamped for a greener turf, of course. We need better leaders. We need leaders with a better compass.
3. Real-money prediction markets are still illegal in most countries (including in David Pennock’s one).
4. North-American aficionados of the prediction markets (and that includes Paul Hewitt) have always lambasted UK-based BetFair, for silly reasons (just look up Pennock’s prose, above, for one instance), instead of making it the hero of our field. On the other side of the Atlantic, the BetFair management has never joined and supported the prediction market community.

The result is the Waterloo that David Pennock describes in his post, and no solution is proposed (other than the tired mantra, “yes, we can”). [Not a slam to research scientist Dave, just a parting way to get the debate going. ]

Thanks to Iam for the tip.

Thanks to Niall O’Connor for the pointer.

[...] the ‘Happy Hour’ bonus fiasco where they lost millions of pounds from an incompetently written promotion, only to grab all the funds back and accuse the players of wrongdoing.

With so much money at stake, players are now heading for the courts with a watertight case.

- Google Search for “BetFair & Happy Hour”.

- Google News for “BetFair & Happy Hour”.

As a result, their PageRank is still 5/10 — Midas Oracle is 6/10 (and we don’t have any budget).