true - but that has been the case for many years and is a "constant".

Market maturing, volumes increasing and velocity too, micro niches exploited, more markets and further segmentation within each sporting event etc?

What doesn't seem to change much is lack of innovation.. I just don't see much of it happening from the corporates - tabs and can't understand it. Surely with such huge competition and now big overseas players taking a gobble out of the market, why can't they differentiate themselves on product - approach - mission - philosophy? they all seem to copy each other more or less.

Not talking 'best of 3 totes' type of stuff, more like 'a game changer' that makes a sit up and gives one player a huge advantage(to our benefit) with others to follow. Any suggestions gentlemen??

LG

just speaking horse racing - the biggest game changers they could do is
1. specialise in horse racing only and

2. operate as a corporate bookmaker and actually make a book and take on all comers and let them on for whatever they liked.

Extremely risky and they would have to up their form analysis and intelligence network - but done properly they could blow the other corporates out of the water because of their branch network and position in the market. I mean for example where have you seen a betting machine for centrebet - the TAB has them all over the place and they are quite easy to use.


At the moment they are a just a pari-mutuel and a price follower.

Tabs' are nuts for not having setup their own exchange to compete with BF which would probably enable them to tap into Honkers & other Asian markets.

True Aussie, but there are some heavy hitters who can't trade since the commission levy and Premium Charges were introduced so are tackling the TABs v Betfair.
Aside from that, my studies of Betfair have had massive changes in the SP pricing accuracy due to traders leaving, this has transitioned across to the TABs. The last couple of years has seen a 3% lay edge (after commission) or more, dwindle to no edge at all (after commission), laying the whole field.

Ok fair enough

Sorry for the typo...my studies of Betfair SP have not had massive changes lol
my studies of Betfair SP have shown massive changes.

Oops.

Thought there was a little 'God Complex' going on there for a minute;)

My observation, without proof, is that there are a lot more small fields now. This would reduce avge divies on its own.
True or false?

Hi Speedy,

I can understand why one would make this assumption however the recent evidence does not support your observation. The average field size hasn't changed over the most recent two racing seasons. Discounting abnormally low sample sizes it has remained at 8 runners.

There has been though a drop in average dividend across all runners roughly in line with some previous posts depending on what measurement method you apply.