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.
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:
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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