Hey I didn't start it but it's a sharp reminder about what failure could look like. I bet those lads at Carillon will have a shock next payday. I drove past the half finished bypass round Lincoln today and work has stopped. Site empty.
Active traders total all sports ? .... In the UK I'd guess 150 making a living, 500 making something and another 500 having a go. No idea... Wild guess.
Well, I think it's less than most people think. Bet Angel isn't a massive business and I know how many PC payers there are and it's much smaller than people suspect which is why Betfair get away with it, but some of that is also a function of peoples win and loss rate. It's odd to see many, quite talented, coders trying to design software without any perception of market research or how 'big' the software market is. It's not really big enough to sustain the market.
I guess it depends on your definition. I have some public data from Betfair in 2003 but I can't share other data. But you need to think about how you define, trader and what a professional would constitute.
There are way more markets than there used to be and they all do good volume so I'd imagine traders are more dispersed and maybe more in quantity. But to what scale is open to question. Lots of people claim to be traders, but just aren't, even those who claim to be full time.
You could have a stab. In Racing you have an average of £500k per market, so that's £250k on one side. If there were 1000 traders in the market that would only be £250 per trader.
Betfair stated in 2011, when they brought in PC2, that they expected 500 users to be affected out of 3.8M users, I'd imagine the majority would have been traders, plus that was 7 years ago so many more would now have fallen into the net but others either gave up or churned themselves out of the charges.
The amount of PC payers must be an upper bound to the number of full time traders. In other words, if you don't have to pay PC better forget about going full time. In my better years I made about 100 euros a day on average, and that was already enough to join the PC ranks. Last year I averaged only 20 a day and that still qualified for PC! Can't imagine anyone living on 20 euros, and would have doubts at 100 as well. For me it has never been more than a hobby.
Peter says that there are only very few PC payers, there must be even less full time sports traders. (But for the numbers, maybe Peter was referring to PC2 only?) )
but it's a sharp reminder about what failure could look like. I bet those lads at Carillon will have a shock next payday. I drove past the half finished bypass round Lincoln today and work has stopped. Site empty. 
