The Oaks – Betfair’s first ever market

01/06/2012 | By Peter Webb More

A really good nights racing last night at Sandown. Decent trading conditions and plenty of opportunities for everybody. Today we switch to the Oaks and tomorrow the Derby when the summer racing really starts to step up a gear

If you are a Betfair newbie you may not know that the Oaks at Epsom was Betfair’s first market way back when they started in June 2000. Mark Davis reminisced on his blog about it. I think Mark, as an insider, gives a better insight into the early days at Betfair, better than I can. That are some interesting bits in there - ”From memory, I think about £3,400 was matched.” Mark says on the first ever market. By last year that had risen to nearly £3m!

Mark goes on to talk about the launch – “Many people remember our mock funeral which made the front page of the business section of the Sunday Times, when we paraded a coffin around Finsbury Circus and its environs proclaiming, “the bookie is dead – make your own market!”. Far fewer remember the demo we arranged outside the Sports Cafe, where a rag-tag-and-bobtail group of actors donned mackintoshes and flat caps, and held up placards saying “stop the launch”…… The Sports Cafe launch was the ‘official’ launch, but it wasn’t a whole lot more successful than the private one.”

Read the full story on Mark’s blog.