Betfair to list on London Stock Exchange

Betfair, one of the dot-com era’s real success stories now looks set to list on London Stock Exchange after a couple of false starts.

The company last week engaged Barclays Capital and Numis to work with principle advisers Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on IPO plans that are expected to be unveiled this week.

The float hasn’t been priced yet but is expected to value Betfair at over £1.5 billion, putting it straight onto the LSE’s Main Market. Not bad for a company conceived in 1999 by a couple of punters who were disgruntled with the odds they were getting on High Street.

Back in the heady dot-com boom days an investment banker named Ed Wray partnered with a derivatives trader-come professional punter named Andrew Black to launch the company.  They developed the betting exchange concept that matches buyers and sellers of bet propositions and takes a small commission on winnings – offering substantially better value to punters than existing bookies on traditional bet lines.

The concept took off like wild fire (imagine great value being popular…who’d have imagined?) and the company now services over 3 million customers and continues to scare the living daylights out of traditional betting agencies the world over still trying to get their customers to bend over and grab their ankles on big margin bets.

The IPO is going to make Messrs Black and Wray even richer than they already are, as well as bring plenty of joy to family and friends who backed the venture early on in the piece.  It’s also going to give Betfair a very handy war-chest to move on acquisition opportunities in an industry that seems to be consolidating (Bwin/PartyGaming merger) while the US ponders opening its market.

And what’s all this got to do with live dealer casinos?

Well not a lot really. However I have been reliably informed by the guys at Betfair Casino that they do intend adding the live dealer module to their Playtech powered casino in the very near future.  And we’ll let you know as soon as this happens!