Smarkets in latest edition of Wired UK
November 4, 2011
Smarkets founders Jason Trost and Hunter Morris are featured in the December issue of Wired UK.
Pick up the magazine and flip to page 53 for the full story!
X Factor Round of 16 market now live
October 5, 2011
Ever wish you were a teenage girl from Walton-on-Thames? You know, the type with blonde hair, lashings of black eyeliner and a set of pipes that seem better suited for the lead in a gospel choir? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, I’m a 27 year-old brunette from Canada. I can’t put on eye make-up very well and the bulk of my singing is usually done in my head, where no one can hear it.
Thank God then, for X Factor. Seeing that I’ve no chance of making it into the Round of 16, I’ll be curled up on my sofa, accompanying the finalists on their quest for fame whilst simultaneously trying to make a few quid. Our X Factor market is now live: http://smarkets.com/tv-entertainment/
I know what you’re thinking. What kind of vapid person wastes a Saturday night watching B-list celebs proffer vocal advice to young men and women? X Factor is more of an Achilles’ heel to me than a good bar of chocolate. It’s impossible not to be sucked into the melodrama. I regularly tear up watching waitresses and Tesco cashiers sing their hearts out. And I am a sucker for the contestant makeovers and petty rows between the judges.
So who am I putting my money on? No one in Louis’ group, for starters. In spite of my soft spot for Nu Vibe, current odds of 18 and the fact that no group has ever won X Factor means I won’t be risking anything for them. I don’t know what all the fuss is re: Janet Devlin. However, she is the favourite to win. Smarkets currently has her at 4.9, a good price at this early stage – and one you might expect to drop for a nice opportunity to green up should she make it to the later rounds.
Is it campy? Yes. Staged? Obviously. A waste of time? That’s debatable. But despite its frivolity, X Factor certainly makes for riveting television. Let the drama begin.
Facebookies
September 28, 2011
As you may be able to tell from the terrible pun in the title we have some Facebook related news to announce. As of yesterday news users are now able to sign up to Smarkets via their Facebook account. This new process makes it even faster to join the site and start enjoying the exciting world of online betting! However this is just the start – so look forward to being able to invite your Facebook friends into the action and bragging on their walls when your bets win you some big money.
It isn’t all just awesome bells and whistles on the agenda at Smarkets HQ however. We’ve also been hard at work making the site even better for all those hardcore bettors as well. Not only have we revamped our search functionality to make it even easier to find that obscure football match we’ve also made available ALL of our match odds in a handy XML feed. This opens up a wealth of opportunities for the developers in our betting community as now they have access to every price in every market updated every 10 minutes. Couple this with the new Smarkets API that is currently in development and the amount of power at a Smarkets user’s fingertips is growing bigger everday. If you’re interested in either of these new features please email us for more details.
So whether it is Facebook for the fun of it, or a desire for data, there are less and less excuses for why you wouldn’t want to be part of the fastest growing Betting Exchange in the UK.
Smarkets customers are now 20% better off!
September 16, 2011
It is always great to be a sport lover in Autumn. All over the world fans are enjoying the top class excitement offered by Football, NFL and the Rugby World Cup. In a giddy fit of celebration we here at Smarkets have decided to reward all our customers with a new lower commission rate of just 4%. That’s right whether you’re a new or old customer if you were on 5% then your commission is now 20% less than before – and notably less than what certain other exchanges have to offer.
So if you still haven’t signed up to enjoy the Sport-fest this Autumn then what are you waiting for? Join the thousands of other Smarkets users already enjoying this great rate now! While you do we’ll be following the lead of our favourite numerically challenged sports stars and be giving 110% to make Smarkets the best simple, social betting exchange there is.
Additional football markets on Smarkets
August 12, 2011
After searching the globe for the all major football leagues Smarkets is happy to announce the addition of many new football markets to our platform. From the Swiss Superleague to the Mexican Primera Liga, Smarkets will be providing markets for a whole host of the World’s most exciting football leagues.
Given the depth of football markets on offer we have made changes to the navigation. By clicking on the ‘Football’ tab a list of all leagues provided will appear. To make finding a particular market as simple as possible we have categorized leagues alphabetically as well as divided all leagues by either continent or country.
No longer will our customers have to wait until the weekend to have a punt on their favourite football teams. Now football markets will be provided on a daily basis from some of Europe and America’s most competitive competitions.
As ever we wish to hear any feedback as well as any request for new markets on our platform. So if you have any ideas please get in touch.
Tennis markets on Smarkets
May 25, 2011
Last week we put some new tennis markets live on Smarkets. We’re currently offering markets on the match winner and on the correct number of sets, but we’ll be adding some more markets once we’ve ironed out any issues with the data providers.
Eurosport are showing the French Open live and you watch it on your computer on the BBC Sport website. We value your feedback with new markets and features so let us know what you think of our tennis markets and what you want us to offer next. Happy betting!
Smarkets shortlisted for Start-Up 100
April 5, 2011
We’re really excited to have been listed as one of Europe’s most promising start-ups by the Daily Telegraph!
A panel of judges, chaired by TechCrunch‘s Mike Butcher, selected entrants to form a list of the top 100 young technology companies in Europe. At Smarkets we’re trying to do something innovative and different, creating a new user-orientated gambling experience. It’s great for that to be recognised and to be listed alongside so many other promising European technology firms!
Fingers crossed for the awards ceremony on Tuesday April 12!
Comments wanted! A new commission structure
March 29, 2011
Since bringing our 1% commission deal to an end for new customers, we’ve been trying to work out the best way to calculate commission going ahead.
Our aim is to have a commission structure that is competitive, fair, and transparent. We think 5% is too much to charge users, and we want it to be immediately obvious to customers what they can do to reduce their commission. With this in mind, we’d really appreciate any comments or feedback on our current proposals.
Under our proposed structure, we would slash the top rate of commission down to 4%, and offer further reductions to players as soon as they start betting. The reductions would increase along with the player’s average amount staked in a month:
| Average staked per month | Expected Commission |
| 0-£50 | 4% |
| £50-£500 | 3.5% |
| £500-£5,000 | 3% |
| £5,000-£25,000 | 2.5% |
| £25,000-£50,000 | 2% |
| £50,000-£100,000 | 1.5% |
| £100,000+ | 1% |
By ‘stake’ we mean the total liability involved in any single matched order, and the average staked per month would be calculated over a 90 day rolling period, so players are not penalised if their habits change week to week.
There are some details to iron out, and we’ll be letting our customers know well in advance of any changes. However we think that this would be a fair way to move forward. However, nothing is set in stone, and we really value customer feedback. Please get in touch with us, or leave us a comment below!
Welcome to David and Steve
March 14, 2011
Steve is a software engineer who previously worked for the web team of last.fm, spearheading their concert database efforts. He’ll be working with Hunter in keeping our Erlang backend in check.
David has come back to the UK after spending a year in Japan, and will be working with Brad on our front end. He previously was Lead Interface developer at Profission, and was a Web Developer at Yahoo! Europe.
Together they make an extremely valuable addition to the Smarkets team. Welcome aboard!
Horse Racing Launched!
February 16, 2011
Well, this is not really news: we’ve been quietly running horse racing on our site for a few weeks now. It’s taken a long time to get it finally out of the door, but we think it was worth it taking the time to get it right.
Even without publicising this feature we’ve seen a big increase in the amounts being traded, and we recently celebrated our largest ever single trade taking place (on last week’s international friendly between the Netherlands and Austria).
On top of that, it’s looking like we will surpass £3 million traded within the next day or so. So all in all a great start to the year!
Check out the horses at http://smarkets.com/sport/horse-racing and let us know what you think!
