on line booking in tilt per colpa di cheltenham?
Inviato: 11/03/2003 - 12:37
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Bookmakers were preparing yesterday for the most concerted betting spree in British racing with predictions that turnover on the three-day Cheltenham Festival
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will reach at least £200m. Yet for internet betting exchanges, the bookies' new competitors in the gambling market, the tidal wave of action heading their way brings serious concerns, too. When it arrives will they manage to surf it, or will it simply wipe them out?
Betfair, the betting exchange which accounts for at least 95% of the market, suffered a series of crashes last week when turnover was running at perhaps 25% of the level it can expect from tomorrow. The reason was an attempt to upgrade its website's hardware with Cheltenham in mind. Despite rigorous testing, though, the new systems failed miserably within hours of introduction and Betfair has now reverted to its old hardware until the problems can be solved.
For a business that is currently matching 12,000 bets per minute at peak periods, and can expect that figure to rise significantly as soon as the Festival begins, these latest problems are a major concern.
Paradoxically, these worries may also be shared by Betfair's much smaller competitors, Sporting Options and Betdaq, since a crash at the market leader would result in an exodus to the minor exchanges which both would struggle to accommodate.
For the ever-swelling ranks of exchange devotees, then, it is vital that Betfair copes with demand this week. "We've had a pretty bad week," Mark Davies, Betfair's communications director, said yesterday. "We had a massive hardware rollout which we'd been testing for four months and it didn't stand up. We've now gone back to what we had."
Davies is reluctant to make predictions as to precisely how much money Betfair may turn over this week, although he hopes that the sole "million pound" race in the company's history - the Breeders' Cup Mile last year - will be joined by several more over the next three days. For racecourse bookmakers, operating in the shoulder-to-shoulder crush of the ring, the main factor that limits the amount of money they can take has often been said to be the speed at which they can put it into the bag.
There are plenty of so-called "bankers" to be taken on, including Rhinestone Cowboy, whose novicey jumping at Wincanton last time may persuade bookies he is a horse to lay in the Champion Hurdle.
In the prime pitches, meanwhile, the most interesting skirmishes are likely to involve JP McManus, a gambling version of Finn MacCool as far as Ireland is concerned, and Freddie Williams, one of the few bookies with the courage - and pockets - to take him on.
Away from the track, the performance of the favourites could alter the bookies' balance sheets for the entire year.
"We've had a pretty good year so far," Simon Clare, Coral's spokesman said, "but we've taken twice as much ante-post as we did last year and we'll live and die by these three days. Industry-wide, you'll be talking about turnover being at least £200m.
"We calculate every year what will happen if we get the Armageddon scenario of all the favourites coming in and this year most of them have been there from the word go. Besides the Champion Hurdle, there's Best Mate, Moscow Flyer and Azertyuiop. Normally we rely on one or two dropping out or losing form."
There were 15 beaten favourites at Cheltenham last year, though, and the same number two years before that. If anyone is going to hear the hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen this week it is far more likely to be the punters.
Bookmakers were preparing yesterday for the most concerted betting spree in British racing with predictions that turnover on the three-day Cheltenham Festival
ADVERTISEMENT
will reach at least £200m. Yet for internet betting exchanges, the bookies' new competitors in the gambling market, the tidal wave of action heading their way brings serious concerns, too. When it arrives will they manage to surf it, or will it simply wipe them out?
Betfair, the betting exchange which accounts for at least 95% of the market, suffered a series of crashes last week when turnover was running at perhaps 25% of the level it can expect from tomorrow. The reason was an attempt to upgrade its website's hardware with Cheltenham in mind. Despite rigorous testing, though, the new systems failed miserably within hours of introduction and Betfair has now reverted to its old hardware until the problems can be solved.
For a business that is currently matching 12,000 bets per minute at peak periods, and can expect that figure to rise significantly as soon as the Festival begins, these latest problems are a major concern.
Paradoxically, these worries may also be shared by Betfair's much smaller competitors, Sporting Options and Betdaq, since a crash at the market leader would result in an exodus to the minor exchanges which both would struggle to accommodate.
For the ever-swelling ranks of exchange devotees, then, it is vital that Betfair copes with demand this week. "We've had a pretty bad week," Mark Davies, Betfair's communications director, said yesterday. "We had a massive hardware rollout which we'd been testing for four months and it didn't stand up. We've now gone back to what we had."
Davies is reluctant to make predictions as to precisely how much money Betfair may turn over this week, although he hopes that the sole "million pound" race in the company's history - the Breeders' Cup Mile last year - will be joined by several more over the next three days. For racecourse bookmakers, operating in the shoulder-to-shoulder crush of the ring, the main factor that limits the amount of money they can take has often been said to be the speed at which they can put it into the bag.
There are plenty of so-called "bankers" to be taken on, including Rhinestone Cowboy, whose novicey jumping at Wincanton last time may persuade bookies he is a horse to lay in the Champion Hurdle.
In the prime pitches, meanwhile, the most interesting skirmishes are likely to involve JP McManus, a gambling version of Finn MacCool as far as Ireland is concerned, and Freddie Williams, one of the few bookies with the courage - and pockets - to take him on.
Away from the track, the performance of the favourites could alter the bookies' balance sheets for the entire year.
"We've had a pretty good year so far," Simon Clare, Coral's spokesman said, "but we've taken twice as much ante-post as we did last year and we'll live and die by these three days. Industry-wide, you'll be talking about turnover being at least £200m.
"We calculate every year what will happen if we get the Armageddon scenario of all the favourites coming in and this year most of them have been there from the word go. Besides the Champion Hurdle, there's Best Mate, Moscow Flyer and Azertyuiop. Normally we rely on one or two dropping out or losing form."
There were 15 beaten favourites at Cheltenham last year, though, and the same number two years before that. If anyone is going to hear the hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen this week it is far more likely to be the punters.