Word: betfair
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...start-ups will have emerged better from the dotcom meltdown than Betfair. Launched in 2000 by Britons Andrew "Bert" Black and Edward Wray, the London-based online betting exchange has since grown into the world's largest. Rather than play house, Betfair matches bettors with odds offered by other users, its whizzy technology handling some 300 wagers a second. The small cut the firm takes from the bettors' winnings these days adds up to big profits: Betfair pocketed $39 million in net earnings last year. And in refusing wagers from the U.S. - where online gambling is outlawed - Betfair has dodged...
...look back on it as one of the most exciting periods of my life, I guess, the first six months of Betfair, which were fairly high-octane stuff. We would have some disagreements, we'd shout and scream and that sort of thing - I certainly did. But it was incredibly exciting, watching the numbers go up, and watching the business actually happen...
...know how long it will take, but I'm more confident than ever that the U.S. market will open up, and when it does, we will be right at the hub of it. It's frustrating to us that people in the U.S. can't access Betfair. But we go out of our way to make sure they can't because the law is the law and we will always respect that...
Mark Davies, Betfair's international-marketing director, acknowledges the firm is caught in a bind, especially in the all-important U.S. market. And outside shareholders, including venture-capital firms Benchmark and Index Ventures, are growing impatient. But for the moment, the firm is betting that virtue will bring its own reward--in Australia if not in the U.S. Last month the government of the Australian island of Tasmania said it will allow online-betting exchanges, opening the door for Betfair to a huge market that it had resisted tapping illegally...
...legal situation is "absurd," says Mark Davies, international marketing director for the firm Betfair, based in Britain. "Poker is a game played by many tens of millions of Americans. It is played by Presidents and judges. It's strange to say it's illegal just because it is online." In other places, from Hong Kong to Sweden, online wagering similarly runs up against a thicket of restrictions. In Britain, where punters regularly wager in betting shops, online gaming is now legal, which is why companies such as PartyGaming have gone public on the London Stock Exchange...