The Christmas Hurdle from Leopardstown, a good Grade 2 race during the holiday period. But now it will go into history as the race which brought Betfair down. Over £21m at odds of 29 available on Voler La Vedette in-running - that's a potential liability of over £500m. You might think that's a bit suspicious, something's fishy, especially with the horse starting at a Betfair SP of 2.96. Well, this wasn't a horse being stopped by a jockey either - the bloody horse won! Look at what was matched at 29. Split that in half and multiply by 28 for the actual liability for the layer(s). (Matched amounts always shown as double the backers' stake, never counts the layers' risk). There's no way a Betfair client would have £600m+ in their account. Maybe £20 or even £50m from the massive syndicates who regard(ed) Betfair as safer than any bank, but not £600m. So the error has to be something technical. However, rumour has it, a helpdesk reply (not gospel, natur
What was going on with the gamble on Azerbaijan just before the results started to come out?! Mad amount of money going on them!
ReplyDeleteHi Stephen,
ReplyDeleteIt was a big gamble, down to 3.7 or so in the proper winner market that I saw. I honestly didn't think that Norway's song was that great, and my wife thought Azerbaijan was probably the best of the rest - others might have just had similar opinions. Norway got out to 2.86 that I saw, bigger than they were before the semis. And plus, we only see our local versions - you never know how much certain acts are being talked up on telecasts in other countries.