The upper house of the Tasmanian parliament this afternoon vote 14 to nil in favour of the betting exchange (Betfair) legislation with four minor amendments.

The bill now returns to the lower house tonight and will become law in a few hours time (the Tasmanian government have already agreed to the amendments).

Let the revolution begin.

What exactly will this new format do, for us punters, that it doesn't at the moment? Will their be a new website or how will things be affected?

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I like Bing Lee.

Tremendous news.

Hopefully this will improve liquidity.

And if the TABs introduce rival exchanges there will be fun times ahead.

Some night meetings here to tap into the UK demographic could help spice things up.

Basically Mad it will give new users better returns as most markets are bet to around 105% or less whereas the tote operators bet to 117% (win betting) plus - the plus being the rounding down of dividends.

However, there is a commission to be paid to Betfair of up to 5% on actual winnings per event. But even allowing for that on most occasions the punter is far better off.

To have a read of what Betfair offers, go to: http://www.betfair.com/

Even if you choose not to use Betfair, I believe that the punter will benefit regardless. Bookies will no longer be able to sit on a 150% market and expect people to punt with them.
You just have to take a look at the fixed odds markets Centrebet offers compared with Betfair on the UK races. They are very comparable, and closer to 107% than 150%.

Thanks for the reply La Mer,

However i think i am missing something. Can't we use Betfair in this manner already? However if i am to take something from jfc's post, the granting of a license over here will allow for greater liquidity on events (more Aussie punters using Betfair to bet on events) at greater prices than currently being offered. Am i getting the point?

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I like Bing Lee.

I think because they are an exchange as opposed to a bookmaker, that the loophole existed to allow us to bet with them. The law says no bets to be placed with a bookmaker not licensed in Australia. (correct me if I am wrong)..

Not much will change now, but it will become an accepted form of betting because they will be licensed. The law will now back us up getting our money (not that I have ever had any trouble anyway) back from them, whereas before we were probably alone on this. They are now able to advertise in Tasmania.

I really don't think too much will change apart from this, but now that it is accepted, people will be more likely to join up. More money being traded can only be a good thing.

The legality of betting on Australian races is a grey area.

La Mer's comment about a ~105% market only applies if you are a market taker. That is, if you take the price on offer.

But you can instead be a market maker. I won't try to explain that here but just give an example.

One horse in the 1st UK (=very legal and liquid) race tonight has back/lay prices of $18/$21.

A market maker would take the $18 on offer.

A market maker might instead offer to back it at $20. Much better value, but there's no guarantee your bet will be snapped up by a layer.

Once liquidity improves here, the prospects of market makers being matched improves greatly. As does the prospect of effectively betting to a near of sub-100% market.

Many more desirable options available, and once you play about a bit they'll seem like child's play.

I think perhaps Betfair will be a great benefit to TAB punters too eventualy. The only reason the TAB have been charging the take they have is because they haven't had any real competition.
Now that they have [and Betfair will spread to other states], the TAB will compete, just as Quantas had too [and did] when they suddenly had competition.

I agree JFC, I was merely giving an assessment of the closing markets, which is not to say that better prices in many cases would have been on offer sometime during the betting. In fact, I would say state that the 'best-on-offer' prices for the complete field would be well below 100% on many/most occasions.