Betting Exchange IPO

[adamnewell]

Has anyone else heard of The Gaming Bourse due to float on AIM inn June. Any thoughts,as they look interesting. Their direct competitor (Betfair) is valued at around £1bn and they've only been trading 3 yrs. Sound like a fair investment?

 

[adrianallen99]

44 million shares @ 68p gives a market capitalisation just under £30million. It doesn't sound to bad a price, but betfair is not there only competitor. In fact there is a lot of competition in this market.

Have you looked at how some of the other competitors have faired and what they are worth.

 

[probookie]

Don't forget network effects - betfair have the market, and there are NO successful competing exchanges, though plenty have tried (and are currently trying). Liquidity is everything - if you want exchange betting, you use the exchange that everyone else is using. Lower commissions or smarter software are meaningless if there's no-one there to match your bets with.

It's the same reason why there's only one Ebay. That's a company that makes loads of money, yet no serious competitor has survived (remember QXL?). Network effects again.

Betfair have won this battle - don't expect that to change just because a bunch of city boys with connections are trying to copy the idea.

 

[adrianallen99]

So what happened to this company, did it all go belly up?

If you go to their sites you get this message

However The Gaming Bourse, the parent company of Punt2Punt, is currently carrying out a financial restructure and refinancing. The Punt2Punt site has therefore been taken down until this has been completed.

 

[thewebmaster]

New but wise

New to the board but i'd like to say this

BETFAIR's BIGGEST COMPETITION, namely the late sportingoptions.com...

well you just take a look at the sportingoptions website and you see what's happened to them lolol

And to make the point slightly more clearer, betfair.com are bailing out customers of sportingoptions.com to GAIN MARKET SHARE. THEREFORE drawing liquidity out of every other competitor, lets face it if you were a punter (like me) and betfair.com gave you your £1000 betting bank bank that would put a on your face aswell as the fact you'd probably stay VERY loyal.

I myself got nearly £300 back from betfair.com however i was already a customer of betfair.com and first hand experience tells me that sportingoptions was S*** no liquidity and always seemed very primiative in layout etc. when compared to betfair.com

Stay aware from this betting exchange, unless it has the mob behind it it'll crash and burn like all the rest.

 

[Trader333]

I thought the prime competition was from Betdaq ?


Paul

 

[thewebmaster]

depends really

They're both competition i would regard betdaq as an improving betting exchange however unfortunately betdaq doesn't have such a diversified language base as betfair.com

It's true to say that betfair.com does has and always will rule the world in regards to betting exchanges, the only actual problem with being this is it could be challenged as having a monopoly however how can one define a monopoly where the consumers are obviously choosing their best product over others?

I would regard betfair.com as a sound investment, unfortunate that it's an ltd! lol

If bad press was fallen upon betfair.com maybe then the markets would lose liquidity however betfair.com's commission scheme acts like a loyalty net capturing everyone and making them only use all their money in one place