Today's Football

[ShaunWhite]

If I sat an A level exam for VBA Coding I would be shown up as "staggeringly incompetent" but in no way would knowledge of VBA Coding be considered "staggeringly important"! The two are mutually exclusive.

If you're sitting an exam for it then it's obvioulsy important to you if not the wider world. That was my point. It's only important to the very few people affected by it and without knowing anything about how support is run, or priorities at the time, or what issues they might have with info feeds from 100s of venues nobody can say how they're doing.

I was in the financial industry and had to conform initially with FSA 1986 and the evolution of compliance within that industry. If a stockbroker or other provided a service to the low standard Betfair does the Regulators would be down on them like a ton of bricks

Ditto, Financial IT 85-05. tbh the info processed and supplied by brokers and exchanges in financials is a piece of cake compared to what Betfair pull off on a daily basis. It's all centralised and shared for a start whereas Betfair are trying to do the whole process from having an agent at every sports event on the planet to processing 1000s of trades per millisecond with a latency of about 180ms. I'm not saying they're perfect but I don't see many people with first hand experience of writing or supporting a mutil-location realtime transaction processing system complaining much. It's f-kin difficult.

[Euler]

Betfair had their markets ops team at Hammersmith originally and if you went there you could see people managing the markets by watching the sports.

But when Betfair 'merged' with Paddy Power at lot of jobs that were considered duplicated were culled. So market management is now outsourced to the third-party company that employees students and waifs to attend events and relay that information to the third party, who then sends it to Betfair.

You can sort of get away with that as a bookie, but not on an exchange IMHO.

I've seen many events where there is only one main match on TV and they get it all wrong. All they need to do is have somebody watching SKY to solve the problem in this case.

These issues are process issues and related to cost-cutting.

[Atho55]

Instead of trying to cover every sports event on the planet and do it poorly why not cover less and do it better than anyone else.

They have a captive clientele so can pretty much do as they like until a better run setup comes along.

[ShaunWhite]

Instead of trying to cover every sports event on the planet and do it poorly why not cover less and do it better than anyone else.

They have a captive clientele so can pretty much do as they like until a better run setup comes along.

You've answered your own question. Anyone with a monopoly cuts corners until their monopoly is threatened. They're not a charity so you can't expect them to spend money unless they benefit, and they clearly don't see an improvement in service being likely to pay for itself in turnover.

They'll only change when the bottom line is threatened but everytime they cock up and some sort of affirmative action might make a difference it's greeted with a resounding can't be bothered.

[firlandsfarm]

If I sat an A level exam for VBA Coding I would be shown up as "staggeringly incompetent" but in no way would knowledge of VBA Coding be considered "staggeringly important"! The two are mutually exclusive.

If you're sitting an exam for it then it's obvioulsy important to you if not the wider world. That was my point. It's only important to the very few people affected by it and without knowing anything about how support is run, or priorities at the time, or what issues they might have with info feeds from 100s of venues nobody can say how they're doing.

Sorry Shaun but can't agree, not "obviously important". I sometimes sit 'exams' on the Internet when waiting for something to happen like "can you name these past British classic cars" but that's not important to me!

[firlandsfarm]

All they need to do is have somebody watching SKY to solve the problem in this case.

But that would put the management of the event behind the Sky broadcast giving the courtsiders even more time to take advantage! Yes it would solve the "I forgot to unsuspend it" problem but create a different one.

[firlandsfarm]

They'll only change when the bottom line is threatened but everytime they cock up and some sort of affirmative action might make a difference it's greeted with a resounding can't be bothered.

It's a fault of reactive management rather than defensive management. A bit like car maintenance was a few decades ago … my car doesn't need a service, it's not broken down, Then we learned if I get my car serviced it won't breakdown! Management happily carries on with a "no competition no need" attitude rather than a "how can we protect ourselves from an attack on our market". Microsoft is a prime example, look how they allowed their monopoly come under attack by allowing others to introduce the product development they hadn't.

[wearthefoxhat]

That 2nd goal wasn't a total surprise...

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[wearthefoxhat]

So Aberdeens' footballers have been hit by Covid...

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[wearthefoxhat]

I wonder who was at fault for Real Madrid conceding?

[Trader Pat]

Why is BT Sport HD1 so much louder than BT Sport HD2?

Very very annoying when flicking between the two

[NickH]

What happens with the bets that are placed after betfair have opened the market again with VAR check still being executed for a goal? Can’t they just wait with the unsuspension after kick-off after the goal? Jees, so unprofessional.

[wearthefoxhat]

Big slugs of money on the Under 2.5g market.

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[Euler]

I guess the market is discounting Atalanta shutting up shop, but not seeing that in the game at the moment.

[Euler]

A goal for PSG opens the match up again. No goal keeps it tight.