I came across this snippet today from 25th October 2010, while I looking for something else:
LAST WEEK’S SUCCESSFUL FLOTATION OF BETTING EXCHANGE BETFAIR IS GOOD NEWS FOR IRISH QUOTED BOOKMAKER PADDY POWER, which now does over half of its business online, Ireland’s Sunday Independent reports. Demand for the shares was strong, with the price jumping from £13 to £15, valuing the whole company at €1.6 billion. The paper points out that for that money you could buy the whole of Paddy Power and still have more than €400m to spare.
Market cap of Paddy Power today? €3.1bn.
Paddy Power have done really well, cultivating .. or at least .. advertising, well publicised refunds, for clients, on multiple occasions.
Their site is not perfect, and .. whether they actually lay a serious bet, is open to debate, but, on many counts, (advertising/public relations), they seem superior to Betfair.
We were led to believe, Betfair have a fantastic architechture, and match more traffic than many stock exchanges.
This is all v well, but, I recently lost £2k, on a cricket runs lines market, laying a side to score over 200, when they had already scored 300.
The fact this line, was still available, was a fault of the Betfair architechture – and my fault.
My email to Betfair, was met, with .. No refund, but will be added to the hospitaility lists.
Nothing on that front yet .. (2 mths ago).
They continue to give the impression, they just dont care .. and stakeholders, can only take that, for so long.