Letter From Betfair - Dear Loser

Courtesy of the Betfair forum, it appears that Betfair have e-mailed a number of people (small winners) this week with this offering (note especially the ending of the first paragraph):

Congratulations! You’ve had a winning week on Betfair. And like 98% of your fellow winners out there, you won’t be paying any Premium Charge; and by our estimation, you never will.

There’s been a lot of misinformation in the press and chatrooms about the new charge, so we just wanted to assure you of this after your successful week and to share some information with you.

The charge will only affect customers who, in the long-term, generate very little commission compared to the amount they win. Those customers pay less as a proportion of the funds they remove from the exchange than we spend bringing those funds to the exchange in the first place. This behavior is unsustainable for the long-term health of the exchange and not in the interests of customers, like you, already contributing their fair share.

We don’t want to limit any customer winning because that’s not what we’re about – we are just asking a few to contribute a little more, so that we can continue to grow the exchange for everyone’s benefit.

In its first week, the Premium Charge is being paid by fewer than 500 customers. During this period, we had more than 110,000 people punting on the exchange, so, fewer than 0.5% of our customers fell into the new charge category.

Betfair’s liquidity continues to be excellent. For example, the volumes traded in our football markets, last week, were the third best ever, surpassed only by the final weeks of Euro 2008 and the World Cup.

Many thanks for your support and we hope you continue to be a winner with Betfair. Yours sincerely,

The Betfair Team

"...you won’t be paying any Premium Charge; and by our estimation, you never will."

Amazing. In other words, "...you got lucky this week and had a small win, but you will never be one of our biggest winners you big fat loser so keep betting". How insulting.

They also claim that liquidity continues to be excellent, but the cricket markets for one have been noticably quieter, and as I keep saying, once BETDAQ gets going, and it is improving each day, the tipping point will one day be reached and Betfair will be a shadow of its former self. Very short-sighted.