I've been using Betfair for a long time now but it's only recently I've wondered the amount creates this change company can certainly make? This question is the thing that has compelled me to publish this informative article. I will not be getting copies with their accounts from companies house, this content will be all conjecture depending on what I've grabbed while using the site in the past.

What has allowed me to ponder this question could be the transparency within the Betfair site. If you consider traditional bookies like WilliamHill, Ladbrokes or Betfred, what you don't know on any particular sporting event is exactly what has become bet in whole and also on what particular outcome these bets were placed.

Take a consistent Friday afternoon race meeting at say Ascot. It's the 2.30 and 5 horses are racing; the punters are logging on to one of several traditional bookmakers websites and backing the various horses. The outcome is the second favourite winning, we've got no clue whether everyone was backing the outsider or favourite, just how much was bet, and what kind of assist the bookmaker made.

Now consider the same race with Betfair. The total amount exchanged for that race is given at the top of the page, sboarena that is typically about A�200,000 for a standard horse race. Now we understand that Betfair please take a commission on all winnings, as well as for every bet exchanged you will find there's winner, so they're taking their 5% regardless of the result — about A�10,000 in this instance.

So now for any quick bit of 'back of fag packet' maths. Approximately 40 races every day generating A�10,000 each is A�400,000 every day 7 days weekly, that's 2.8 million pounds every week. Throw inside the bigger meetings and that rounds up to convey 3 million, 5% that is A�150,000.

Now consider the Premiership football season. At least 12 games a week generating between A�200,000 along with a million pounds in exchanged bets, go ahead and take average and work out the 5% commission which's another A�350,000. On top of this you have the lower league and foreign games that has to generate another A�100,000 in commission so we're up to Half a thousand pounds weekly in revenue.

Bear planned that you could (and people do) bet on everything, golf, cricket, tennis, boxing, champions league football, International soccer, not forgetting gaming. I'm beginning to arrive at concluding that they must be attracting weekly revenue inside millions, and when it's only A�3 million per week, that's over 150 million per year.

I admit to having no clue if my workings are drastically wrong here, if Betfair actually has annual revenue of A�1million or A�1billion. Neither do I have a sense of what their attorney's fees, IT costs etc add up to. What I do see is the fact that unlike traditional bookmakers the results of any sporting event doesn't have relating their revenue.

To this end their main aim must be to just recruit as much customers as possible, which poses the question; with the numerous online bookies out there offering free introductory bets as high as plus excess of A�100, then exactly why do Betfair only offer A�30. That is the topic of my next article.