Word: betfair
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Dates: during 2004-2004
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...CYBERSPACE GAMBLER BETFAIR | BRITAIN...
...forged it by co-founding, with Ed Wray, London-based Betfair, the peer-to-peer cybercasino that has done for gambling what eBay did for garage sales. On Betfair there's no house; the site's 250,000 registered customers simply post their bets and wait for someone to take them on. Betfair charges a commission on each winning bet; the more you bet, the lower the commission. When the site was launched in 2000, with $1.8 million raised from Black's and Wray's network of contacts, it was taking less than $90,000 in weekly bets...
Some traditional bookmakers charge that Betfair's practice of allowing bets on losers as well as winners might facilitate corruption by encouraging competitors to throw events for financial gain. Says Graham Sharpe, spokesman for old-style bookie William Hill: "If you have a bet on an exchange, you don't know who it's with. If [the person] is offering extravagant odds, you don't know why." Black counters that his site makes strange betting patterns easier to identify. He points out that Betfair has signed agreements with, among others, the Jockey Club in Britain and the English Football Association...
...Black ambles around Betfair's offices in shorts and a fleece. In his spare time, he still likes to gamble. The next wager he'll need to make is when to take Betfair public, something he insists won't happen for at least 18 months. "We've got to knock the company into shape," Black says. "We want to get the timing right." It's the biggest bet of all, and not something even a seasoned gambler would take lightly. --By Jennie James/London...
...gambling. The biggest exchange, Betfair, told the Jockey Club that the Lingfield race attracted more than three times the bets expected on such a lowly contest, most of them going on Ballinger Ridge, either to win or lose. The Jockey Club's John Maxse said it would investigate that, and any failure by Fallon to get the best possible place, saying: "The matter is our No. 1 priority." Racing's Rubber Match Was that a fat lady singing on the podium after the very first Grand Prix of the Formula One season? You might have thought so, given the stunned...