
Contrary to
my earlier post about the Liberal Democrats grasping at straws,
Yellow Peril have now confirmed that the Lib Dems are just making things up when they claim
"It's a two horse races" say bookies. The "bookies" they cite are not bookies at all:
Betfair don't run their own book on anything - they allow punters to swap bets.
It might sound like a small technical difference, but it is central to their claims in the byelection that Labour are out of the running. When bookmakers offer odds they have to make a decision about the likely outcome when they set the odds, no such process takes place at Betfair.
But there is another lie within the Lib Dem claim - as Betfair are a swap service they offer a range of odds. At this moment in time the best odds for Labour are indeed 100-1. But at the other end of the market the shortest odds offered for the Lib Dems - 3 - 1 - are the same as the shortest odds offered for Labour.
1 comment:
As I also commented on Mr. Peril's site, this is a bizarre and obscure story with no facts of any value.
Labour ARE 100/1 (when I looked about 10 minutes ago), and Lib Dems are about 6/1.
As anybody who knows online betting will tell you, due to the competitive nature of its users being able to offer their own odds, Betfair gives a much more realistic reflection of the true odds than any of the traditional bookmakers. As long as a reasonable amount of money is traded on any particular market, it is therefore a very good guide of how things will go.
Arguing about the definition of whether Betfair is a bookmaker or not for party political reasons is a complete nonsense (and this issue of definition has always been hotly disputed in the industry anyway).
A waste of blog space (and now I feel shame for contributing to it).
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