An offshoot of binary betting, the fixed-odds replica that itself is a follow-on from spread betting, Extrabet is a back-only service that will give punters the option to close their bet at any time during an event, taking a profit or cutting a loss.
Here is an example from the Middlesbrough v Bolton Premiership match on 26 March 2006. Imagine you had expected a high-scoring draw, and decided to bet on a 3-3 scoreline. Before kick-off, you place a bet of £10 at decimal odds of 51.0 (equivalent to a fixed-odds price of 50/1).
So, you will either win £500 or lose £10. But, with Extrabet , you also have the third option to take your winnings early.
The match gets off to an eventful start with Giannakopoulos scoring after three minutes, and Hasselbaink making it 1-1 in the 8th minute. So far, so good. And by the time the referee blows for half-time, Viduka has made it 2-1 to Boro.
You decide to keep an eye on your bet during the second half and go to the Open Bets page.
Hasselbaink scores again two minutes into the second half, making it 3-1. The value of your bet is now shown as £12.00. Okocha brings the score to 3-2 in the 58th minute, and the value jumps to £65.00.
And then, in the 81st minute, Jaidi levels the score at 3-3! If the score can only stay that way, you will win £500. The value shown on the Open Bets page is now £294.50.
Take It!
Every second that goes by without a goal is good for your bet. By the 88th minute, the value has climbed to £380.00.
This is enough for you. There still looks to be plenty of action in the game and you're worried about a last-minute winner. You press Take It! and your bet is settled for £380.00 (including your £10 stake).
And now you can relax! It doesn't matter what happens in the remaining minutes of the game, the winnings are yours to keep.
Which is just as well. As it happens, Parnaby scores an injury-time winner for Middlesbrough and you would have lost the lot!
|
Judgement will still be needed to decide when, or if, to close out, but Spurs' fans in particular will appreciate the possibilities, after seeing their side go 2-0 up against Leicester in the Cup, only to slide to a 2-3 defeat.
"We had to get the technology and the site right for the mass market," he said. "We could have changed our existing site, www.binarybet.com, but that's quite complicated and tailored more for financial markets.
"We wanted to give the new service a broader feel, and to make it available on any PC, and that takes time in IT terms.
Extrabet markets will concentrate on ball games, rather than horseracing, and its strength, le Roux claims, will rest with the in-running offers.
He explained: "We'll have a level of liquidity at every price throughout an event that other betting firms cannot match consistently.
"Fixed-odds bookmakers and the betting exchanges have issues over in-running betting, in that they take down their prices after, say, a goal is scored. In addition, the exchanges don't have liquidity in every event, because they depend on people matching bets, and so are intermittently liquid.
"Our prices are updated once a second, and we will be streaming prices on more events than anyone else.
"Extrabet is a no-fuss product both to look at and to use."
IG Group chief executive-designate Tim Howkins has recently admitted that the jury was still out on Extrabet, the spread-betting company's latest sports product, which gives punters a fixed-odds, back-only service that can be closed at any time during an event.
Extrabet, a mass-market offshoot of binary betting, which itself grew out of spread betting as a fixed-odds replicate that allows a punter to buy or sell an amount per point on a 0-100 index, was launched at the end of April.
Howkins revealed that Extrabet, which is concentrating on ball games, had recruited nearly 9,000 clients, of whom two-thirds placed a bet, to its dedicated website.
However, he added: "Transaction sizes are much smaller than in our other businesses, as we expected, but the slight disappointment is that clients are proving significantly less 'sticky'.
"Towards the end of the World Cup, we had recruited around 8,000 clients but only about ten per cent of them were logging on daily. They'd have one bet and then weren't seen again, which was probably the World Cup marketing effect, because every firm was offering concessions to open client accounts."
Howkins added that there was no loss of confidence in Extrabet, speaking on publication of financial results for the year ended May 31, which showed a 51 per cent increase in underlying profit of pounds 52.6 million, on turnover up 44 per cent to pounds 89.4m.
Send this article to a friend!