When he is not reading Midas Oracle, Mike Robb works at BetFair on the Right2Bet campaign —-as you all know.
Mike Robbs blog on PR, media, betting exchanges, and other British things (mint sauce on red meat, etc.)
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Tag Archives: BetFair
BetFair (via Right2Bet) are furious at the new French gambling laws.
Right2Bet (operated by BetFair):
A Senate hearing on Tuesday looked at ways in which the French authorities could make it more difficult for operators not licensed in France from offering their products to French citizens.
They are now looking at adding wording to the new gambling bill, set to ‘-open up’- the market in time for the World Cup this summer, that makes it illegal for any French-based company from taking advertising or even simply linking to certain sites.
Those sites based inside France, including multi-nationals with French subsidiares, notably Google, found to be ‘-aiding and abetting’- (no pun intended) foreign operators could face fines of up to €100,000.
This is just another example of the French bill being a facade. They want to appear like they are liberalising their market, to fit in with EU rules, but clearly they are going to make it as hard as possible for foreign operators to offer their services to value-deprived French citizens, and are even looking to make it difficult for those who do apply for a French license.
At what point is someone going to wake up and say ‘-enough is enough’-? Don’-t wait for someone else to do it, sign our petition today and add your voice to the thousands of EU citizens already calling for fairness in online gambling.
France = Communist China
France will soon block access to the BetFair and InTrade websites.
Gambling operators that are not be licensed by France will have their web access blocked for the French public. The license would require that servers be located within French territory.
France = Communist China
BetFair at the Crunchies 2009
BetFair was one of the gaming sponsors at the Crunchies 2009.
Games were “-free to play”- at the after-event party (at SF’-s City Hall). Donations to UCSF were welcomed.
If you were there, please comment below.
InTrade has a higher PageRank than BetFair. No change.
Google has just updated its external PageRank servers. (The PageRank is updated internally in a continuous way, but Google updates its external servers once a quarter or so.)
– InTrade is 7/10. BetFair 6/10. HSX 6/10. HubDub 6/10.
– BetFair’-s blog (Betting @ BetFair) is 5/10, proving, once again, that it is a mediocre publication run by mediocre people. BetFair’-s second blog (BetFair Predicts) is 4/10. Midas Oracle is 6/10.
– For the record, the goal to attain (for both exchanges and publications) is 7/10.
BetFair is the best innovation that happened to horse-race betting.
#1 innovation of the decade = Peer-to-peer wagering
“-In 2000 two men who liked to play card games and make a bet or two created the Ebay of betting –- an exchange where players could bet with each other.”-
BetFair co-founder Ed Wray laments the suppression of UKs tax incentive for startup entrepreneurs.
BetFair chairman Ed Wray: “-Too many hurdles in the way of enterprise”-.
Wray refers to a tax incentive that he and Black used to launch Betfair after they were forced to go to friends and family for funds, having failed to raise capital from institutional investors.
“-That was very useful in terms of getting the business off the ground. Everything I see now is about cutting back on those opportunities.”-
Will Lewis Hamilton on McLaren-Mercedes win Formula Ones 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix?
Formula One’-s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates:
BetFair’-s favorite is Lewis Hamilton on McLaren-Mercedes.
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Bonus Track 
Ferrari World –- Ferrari theme park @ Abu Dhabi
UPDATE: FAIL.
What happened to Betfairs Arnault card?
Bernard Arnault is the 14th richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $16.5 billion US dollars. (Forbes). In 2007, Arnault was listed among Time magazine’-s 100 Most Influential People in The World. No bad thing for Betfar then, that Europeatweb, an internet-based fund controlled by Arnault, holds a 10 per cent stake in the company.
In August 2009 it was reported that Betfair would be allowed to apply for a betting licence in France, ahead of the partial liberalisation of the French betting market in 2010. It was said that Betfair’-s application had been approved by the French authorities, after heavy lobbying by Arnault.
Fast forward to October 2009 and it looks like Betfair will be excluded from the newly liberalised French betting market. A surprising defeat for Arnault and a major shock for Betfair.
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If Michael Giberson is wrong, then that means that Chris Masse is right.
I donta€™ know that you could say Chicago was the a€?weakest linka€?, just because it got dropped first in the voting. The political process caused it to go early. However, Michael Giberson is wrong to imply that the prediction was accurate on the basis that Chicago and Rio were fairly close. Leta€™s keep in mind that the options are about as discrete as they come. Even if Chicago were to have come in a close second, it would have been a complete miss by the market.
If one needed to make a decision that depended on whether Chicago would win the bid, the prior choice would have been completely wrong, once the true outcome was revealed.
I have to agree with Chris. The market participants did not possess a sufficient level of information completeness to arrive at the correct prediction. Furthermore, the discrete nature of the outcomes made it a risky prediction. Finally, Ia€™m guessing that few, if any, of the IOC voting members were involved in the prediction markets, leading one to conclude that all (or almost all) of the market participants were a€?noisea€? traders.
Elsewhere, another commentator claimed that, because the prediction market started to show Chicagoa€™s share falling during the morning of the vote, this was evidence that prediction markets work. Hardly. It does show that prediction markets rarely provide accurate predictions sufficiently in advance of the outcome, in order for useful decisions to be made.
The prediction market industry really needs to investigate the determinants of success and which types of markets (issues) have the potential to provide consistently accurate predictions. Way too much time and effort is being spent arguing about meaningless markets, trivial questions, and false accuracy claims.
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Previously: Chicago wona€™t have the Olympics in 2016.
ADDENDUM:
– BetFair’-s event derivative prices:
– InTrade’-s event derivative prices:
– HubDub’-s event derivative prices:
