What is a Betting Exchange?
First time the word betting exchange appeared was in 2000 in the UK and the artificer was the website Flutter.com. Betfair quickly adopted this philosophy and in June 2000 moved forward to a genuine exchange model. Later on, Flutter also took that direction and improved the system.
Betting exchanges depend on customers and liquidity, like any other type of exchanges. The point is to have a bet paired up with a matching counterbet. An innovation from the part of Betfair is the use of decimal odds instead of the classical fractional. This type of odds have become so popular that even other companies are beginning to offer this possibility to its customers.
A betting exchange is lucrative through a commission charged to each customer on each event, calculated on the basis of the percentage of a players net winnings. Thus, players who were feared by bookies due to their immense winnings have found in betting exchanges a great way to keep making money without restrictions. The only thing they are required is to have the will to match their bets. Another advantage of betting exchanges are the odds, which are better than the odds offered by sportsbooks.
A betting exchange, however, does not suit multiple parlay bets with no restrictions. Sporstbooks liker Betfair might offer accumulators but they are limited and users can not figure out the outcome those accumulators. Likewise, betting exchanges also restrict odds to between 1.01 and 1000, that is 1/100 and 999/1 respectively. A betting exchange, though, is obliged to allow customers to wager in different currencies. To this purpose, they can purchase foreign currency and minimize exchange rates oscillations.
