I used to work in newspapers on the page production side and it was a fun business, producing each page – often as part of a racing/sports betting package - to a deadline each night then doing the whole thing again from scratch the next day.
"First and foremost will be a new odds ladder, more granular (more increments at finer margins) than its predecessor."
Websites are different, it’s like producing one package, but then constantly tinkering and improving that package.
It’s very satisfying, you give yourself a sound platform to build upon and watch it evolve over time.
We’re working on upgrading backandlay.com all the time and, in the next week or two and to coincide with the new football season, we hope to release further upgrades.
First and foremost will be a new odds ladder, more granular (more increments at finer margins) than its predecessor.
Indeed, it will be more granular than any other odds ladder out there.
It will be primarily a ladder for decimal users – and will default to Decimal View – but we will be retaining the optional Fractional View, and the ladder will continue to carry odd-looking decimal increments like 2.375 and 2.625 which enable us to display 11/8 and 13/8 respectively et al to those more comfortable with fractions.
Bets, however, will be settled using the decimal odds as the base for settlement, though.
Hot on the heels of the new odds ladder will be the long-awaited API (Application Programing Interface) which Glyn, my business partner and backandlay.com Chief Technology Officer, has been working on, on and off, since December 2003.
This will make it considerably easier for prospective price-setters to use backandlay.com and, while I’m not expecting an instant impact on liquidity, I am hopeful that, over time, it will help.
One these are in place, I feel the time will be right to devote development time to enhancing our methods of deposit.
Top of the list there will be joining and integrating Neteller and upgrading our Moneybookers service to embrace their latest technology.
We will then have two methods of card deposit.
We also remain hopeful that Royal Bank of Scotland will launch a third such product, ‘BetPay’ in the autumn.
These are what are known as ‘’third party e-wallet solutions,’’ – i.e. customers deposit money with these payment service providers, and hence any chargeback risks are assumed by them, not us.
This makes it easier for us to carry on charging 1% commission, but the downside is that these PSPs make a charge to cover their risks.
Naturally, we’d love to offer conventional card deposit facilities, the same as big gaming operators like Betfair.
But we need to have been trading three years (taking us to 5th November 2006) in order to apply and, even if accepted, we’d have to lodge a bond of £400,000 as 30 days rolling cash cover.
We’sd also be charged an average of 35 pence per deposit or withdrawal (25 pence going to the bank, 10p to an online processing company like Datacash) and that’s a tough charge to keep swallowing if you’re only charging 1% commission.
We’ll cross the bridge over whether we absorb such a charge or pass it on, when we come to it – I certainly won’t be going down the road of universally increasing the commission rate to 2% making customers who seldom top up or skim their accounts pay for the perpetual deposit/withdrawal traffic of others.
Pay for the services you use, as you use them, seems much fairer to me.
Actually, we already effectively swallow charges. We do incur bank charges for processing deposits and withdrawals by cheque and bank transfer, the interest earned on the Limited Clients Account just about covers the charges so we can carry on offering this a free facility
"We'll also build the functionality which enables us to place a variable time delay on the matching of bets in specific markets"
Once we have improved our deposit options, we’ll then focus on other website upgrades.
Next priority will be an enhancement to our current Rule 4 system which will be replaced with a reduction factor system.
We’ll also build the functionality which enables us to place a variable time delay on the matching of bets in specific markets – we will then be in a position to offer in-running betting on a par with the opposition.
And we will also build the variable multiple winners possible escrow which will allow us to offer place betting and other multiple winner markets (like relegation markets).
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There will be other functionality upgrades and new features and enhancements after that, but these are what I see as the being the core upgrades required to give us a website I am start thinking about ‘’going to war with’’ in terms of starting to more aggressively market the product.
BBC
