Betfair goes for online sports but not online casino

Casinos.ie not only keep their eyes open for developments in the online casino world for our Irish casino players such as the release last month of the new All Irish Casino but we also try to keep you abreast of happenings in the general online gambling world and to this end casinos.ie has learned that the online betting exchange Betfair has decided to enter the world of fixed odds sports betting and take on the likes of Paddy Power and Ladbrokes to name a couple. Betfair has never been in the online casino business and casinos.ie does not believe that they have any immediate plans to do so but the fact that they think they are losing business by only offering peer to peer gambling is interesting. The problem with simple peer to peer gambling is that it takes time to build a book so that in play gambling becomes impossible and generally speaking whereas traditional online bookmakers can start a book sometimes weeks or months in advance online gambling providers such as Betfair cannot. Casinos.ie has heard that they have been trialling a system in Cyprus in preparation for a release before the Euro 2012 football tournament. A spokesperson from Betfair said “We know from our own research that we lose 30% of our customers’ sports betting wallet to the competition. Why should customers have to go elsewhere and why would we willingly let this large chunk of business walk out the door?” At casinos.ie we think this is a brave step; we know that Irish online casino players also like online sports gambling but we also know that they do not always go to the same place for both online gambling experiences as online bookmakers do not necessarily provide the best online casino and the best online sports betting so we think online gambling customers will continue to choose.