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BetFair-TradeFair is legal and has ethics, while TradeSports-InTrade is not and has none.
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Via Steve Roman who provides the recap and another excerpt, The New York Times:
[…-] At the center of the investigation is Betfair, one of the largest so-called online sports exchanges, which matches bettors directly against each other, rather than against the house, as traditional bookmakers do. Betfair set off the current crisis when it voided $7 million in bets after Mr. Davydenko withdrew from a match against 74th-ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina at the Prokom Open in August in Sopot, Poland. Mr. Davydenko retired because of an injury with Mr. Vassallo Arguello ahead, 2-6, 6-3, 2-1. During the match, Betfair notified the ATP that its security team had recognized irregular betting patterns.
[…-] At Betfair, which is based in London, tennis ranks third behind horse racing and soccer among its one million customers, who together place five million bets each day. More than $60 million was handled for the Wimbledon’s men’s final, won by Roger Federer over Rafael Nadal.
Robin Marks, a Betfair spokesman, said the decision to void the bets from the match in Poland — the first time the company had ever done so — was an easy one. A large amount of money was coming in for the obscure match, Mr. Marks said, and the betting patterns made little sense: Mr. Davydenko went from an odds-on favorite to a significant underdog before the match started, and his odds drifted higher and more money came in for Mr. Vassallo Arguello even after Mr. Davydenko won the first set.
By the next morning, Betfair’s 40-person security team had unearthed additional information by combing its records and tracing unique Internet addresses. Betfair passed on that information in accordance with the ATP’s anti-corruption program, which was put in place in 2003 in the wake of a match-fixing scandal in cricket. Mr. Marks said Betfair has similar agreements with 28 other sports leagues on which it takes bets. He declined to specify what Betfair had found. “Why would the betting patterns change before a ball was even hit?” Mr. Marks said. “Why would more money come in against him when he had already won the first set? You come to the assumption that somebody knew something.” […-]
Previously: BetFair has an anti-fraud team whereas InTrade-TradeSports has none.
Read the previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:
- Terrorism Futures
- InTrade-TradeSports and BetFair-TradeFair should take a close look at Cantor Fitzgerald’s strategy to gain a share of the $100 billion U.S. gambling industry.
- The secrecy-seeking Mark Davies is solely to blame for all this mess… but this vibrating BetFair spin doctor has managed to repair the PR damages quite brillantly, it shall be said.
- A Betting Exchange = A Bookmaker —> !??
- BetFair’s new bet matching logic + BetFair Malta’s trading on the multiples
- Dick Cheney, the new Churchill?
- BetFair Malta’s combo market maker (trading algorithm + human market makers) operating on the multiples
