Betfair Australia was established in 2005 and operates the country’s only betting exchange under a Tasmanian Gaming License. The Betfair brand itself was founded in the UK in 2000 by Andrew Black and Edward Wray. The company opened operations in Malta before being granted a license in Tasmania. The first bet in Australia was taken in 2006 and since then a staggering 350 million bets have been placed with more than two million calls.
In 2014, Betfair completed a sale of 50% of its stake in Betfair Australia to Crown Resorts. Crown is one of Australia’s largest gaming and entertainment groups. The stake was valued at 5.5m.
The company set a world record in March 2015 for most money traded in a single market with $184,383,446 was traded for a cricket game between South Africa and New Zealand. As the only betting exchange legally operating in Australia, Betfair offers LAY bets as well as markets with no margins. Today, the company is headquartered in London and is run by CEO Peter Jackson.
The focus at Betfair Australia in on horse and greyhound racing, however, there are a plethora of sports available to choose from. The site lists 28 different categories for the player to choose from. Among the sports, you can find Esports, rugby, cricket, tennis and basketball. Ice hockey, soccer, golf and baseball are listed as well. There are also more than a few categories with the main focus other than just sports.
The ‘Current Affairs’ section contains markets for things like who will be the next Governor of the Bank of England. ‘Special Bets’ give the player the option of betting on just about anything you could think of from TV shows to Oscar winners and even on whether a specific city will see snowfall on the 25th of December or not.
The ‘Politics’ section includes bets on country’s elections for mayors, governments and presidents. If that was not enough, there is also a ‘Financial Bets’ section. Some of the markets here include betting on the next FOMC announcement, the future of Bitcoin stock or the changes of Australian Interest Rates. For winter sports, there is a section for all of the disciplines you would expect to see including Alpine Skiing and Biathlons. The same exists for the ‘Athletics’ section with mostly track and field events including 1500m, 20km walk, javelin, marathon and long jump.
Basketball
Although the markets are not exemplary there will at least be options to bet on the money line, some variants of handicap bets and the option to back all or lay all of the bets. There are a good number of leagues for the player to choose from, with options including the NBL, the Finish Korisliiga, Euroleague, Danish Basket Ligaen and the French ProA League. Yes, the NBA is missing on the Betfair sportsbook.
Cricket
The popular sport of Cricket has multiple competitions and leagues featured on the site, including Men’s and Women’s International Twenty20 Matches, the Caribbean Premier League and Test Matches. For most of the games played, the user can make a bet on the possibility of a match being drawn and a large number of over/under bets on the total number of runs for the individual innings. The player can also wager on who will be a team's top batter for a specific inning.
Of course, you can also find bets on the money line. Not forgetting that Betfair is an express, there are options to lay all bets in this section. Cricket is known for being a long game and Betfair offers a market challenging the player to guess how long the game will last. The player can choose between days and morning/evening that the game takes place up until the evening of the fifth day. Whether the match will end as a tie or not is also an available option.
Rugby League
The famous Australian league for rugby has multiple competitions and markets for its matches. Under this section, you can find bets on the NRL, Super League, National State Championship and NRLW. However, only the NRL and the Super League will have a decent number of bets available, with the former having almost twice as many.
Handicap, money line and totals bets are listed for every league. In the NRL though, there are many more markets to wager on. You can bet on the first or last try-scorer, the time the first try was scored and the total points scored by each individual team. Who will score the first try for each team is also listed. Popular bets like the first to 10 points and the first to 20 are there, as well as bets on the winning margin and which half will be the higher-scoring one. There is an abundance of halftime bets also in this section.
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