Sport is made for betting

You always have to wonder where the liquidity for the other exchanges comes from, there's such a big gap between Betfair and the others. Here's a prime example today that the chasing pack just link it all to Betfair via bots and bowler (beard) accounts. Women's US Open market, as shown on Oddschecker. Someone has taken the bigger prices on Li Na, crunching her down to 3.55, showing no depth in the market behind the 55-70 odds taken. Amazingly, Betdaq and WBX can only offer such a ridiculous price as well..... what a coincidence!

These guys were so minor you probably haven't heard of them anyway. BetBull, based in Gibraltar, and part of the Global network (which Betdaq is the main partner of). They promised a lot when they started on their own about five years ago, but soon realised it was an impossible task to get any decent volume and linked into the Global Sports Exchange network. From CasinoCity article As reported by Gaming Intelligence: "Betbull Holdings SE has this morning confirmed the closure of its betting exchange platform at Betbull.com, with effect from February 28th 2009. This follows the recent closure of its German-facing betting exchange platform Betbull.de late last year, prior to the enforcement of the German State Treaty on Gaming on January 1st 2009. These guys mostly focused on Germany and Spain where shops are profitable and exchange betting is simply too niche to make an imprint of the global penetration of Betfair.

You'd probably not notice unless you were focused on US sports markets, but TradeSports has closed down. A message on their site essentially says they've given up as they were never going to make any money out of it. Go back five years, there were probably about 40 betting exchanges out there including several white-labels. Without the liquidity, they will all fall over. Betdaq and WBX have been around for a few years now and still can't make much of a dent on Betfair, despite Betfair scoring a few own goals this year. Matchbook in the US is obviously proprietary backed in-running (prices set in-house, might as well be a bookmaker) much like Mansion tried to be. And there's a new joke-looking one advertising on Livescore at the moment - BetCruise, advertising no commission! Anyone offering odds on them going broke by the end of 09?