Old Guard

One big change during my time away, other than confirmation of the Ladbrokes takeover of Coral first made public in June, was that the option to revert to the old Betfair Exchange site appears to have been removed. 

Fortunately the old site is still available if you know where to look, but the new one is, from my perspective at least, a mess. There are many negative comments on the Forum, with one interesting observation being that the new site is targeted at younger customers - EastLower Gooner wrote:

It's geared to the younger folk, the newbies and the clueless...hence the reason they're opening up new markets like E Sports and League of Legends.

Ultimately you want people walking in, seeing your product and spending loads of money because they've been seduced by stuff like the Cash Out facility...the old guard who know how to look after their funds are not wanted.

Coachbuster, a poster who usually has something interesting to say, noted:

I will add (and not to rub the salt in ) but the protests are on the Horsey forum where the average punter is like around 75.

On the football forum some 2 generations down ,there isn't a single thread of protest - that should tell you all something

Onlooker added that:

Betfair should be aware of the old sayings ...
'Look after what you already have'
'Don't bite the hand that feeds you'
In the latter case - Your 'bright young things', "Under 30s," will be mostly Backers -
The experienced OLDER Betfairians are the Major LAYERS on here - and thus SEED the Markets.
NO LAYERS > NO Liquidity > NO Market = NO BETFAIR.

Some sweeping generalisations above, but I suspect there's more than a grain of truth in the general thrust of the comments.