Smarkets Blog

News and discussion about Smarkets and the gaming industry

New markets added to Smarkets

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We’ve battled through the snow and made it to Smarkets Towers to release some brand new markets. You can now bet on League One, League Two, Champions League and the FA Cup. That’s about sixty new teams and hundreds of upcoming matches for you to have a flutter on.

It looks like many of this weekend’s fixtures could be cancelled due to frozen pitches, but once the snow melts, it’s game on!

Written by Alex Lee

January 8, 2010 at 12:41

Posted in Announcements, Sport

Tagged with , ,

Smarkets in 35 seconds

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We’ve put together this quick video to show the basic features of Smarkets.

We’ll be recording a bunch of videos to illustrate how Smarkets works and to introduce novice punters to the basics of betting. If you have any specific questions, check out our FAQs section or get in touch with us.

Written by Alex Lee

December 16, 2009 at 16:43

Posted in user experience

Tagged with , ,

Gaming payout methods and eGaming Review Live 2009

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Smarkets attended a fascinating presentation by Paul Davis from Counting House at eGaming Review Live last week. Paul talked about how there is a trend towards paperless banking in general life but online gaming is actually an exception. Counting House’s figures showed that electronic payouts were nine times higher than cheques by volume (from January to July 2009), but those cheques were actually worth 8 times more than the electronic payouts.

If gambling is frowned upon (or even illegal) then many punters will request large cheque payouts rather than electronic transfers. Cheques are easier to turn into cash without the accounting trail associated with bank transfers and cheques are a physical piece of paper, this makes bragging in front of your mates much more effective.

Another interesting slide Paul presented was this table which shows the percentage split of payouts:

Country Bank Transfers Payments to Cards Cheques eWallets
Austria 44.49 8.33 10.22 36.95
Australia 20.66 18.49 39.64 21.21
Belgium 15.20 16.86 11.27 56.67
Canada 34.93 12.46 45.34 7.26
Denmark 1.02 49.93 6.14 42.92
France 16.38 49.3 0.00 34.25
Germany 37.84 7.82 8.46 45.88
Hungary 2.67 39.75 1.95 55.63
Mexico 7.92 18.76 25.64 47.68
Netherlands 49.79 3.40 0.02 46.79
New Zealand 2.73 45.90 9.74 41.63
Poland 6.98 5.67 0.16 87.19
Portugal 16.11 3.28 28.38 42.23
Russia 9.59 26.15 0.14 64.12
Sweden 13.63 43.61 1.86 40.90
UK 26.74 52.82 6.44 14.00
USA 48.47 0.00 51.53 0.00

Payment wallets (such as Moneybookers and Neteller) are gaining ground in popularity in many markets. This an area Smarkets has been investigating and (if we can get the costs to the right level) it’ll be something we’ll be adding in future releases.

Written by Alex Lee

December 7, 2009 at 11:07

Betting open on the World Cup 2010 group stages

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We’ve been watching the World Cup draw with interest here in the Smarkets office. With a multinational team, the question of where the USA, England and Australia would be placed was close to our hearts.

England appear to have drawn a reasonable group (despite being in the same group as the USA) and Australia have a chance of going through too, so it looks to be shaping up to be an exciting World Cup next year.

In a fit of excitement we’ve opened the betting for every team’s first match, so place your bets on the World Cup group stages, there’s only 188 days to go!

Written by Alex Lee

December 4, 2009 at 20:30

Updating the betslip

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It’s been a bit quiet on the blog recently, but that’s because we’ve been hard at work improving Smarkets. The latest releases saw some pretty big improvements all round, but in this post I’ll talk a little about the bet slip in particular.

Original bet slip

The bet slip (or widget) is the area on the right of the screen which displays the current status of the users matched and unmatched bets. The piece above the bet slip is called the user card and this is where we display the profile links, avatar and account balance. As you can see, the original user card was pretty hard to read.

The bets used to be grouped by ‘matched’ and ‘unmatched’ with the name of the bet and the amount remaining. A matched bet was where 100% of your stake had been matched by other Smarkets users, an unmatched bet was one where only part of your bet had been matched.

We knew the look and feel needed updating but, after some user testing (conducted on a laptop with rough mock-up prototypes in Omnigraffle), we came across a lot of confusion about what ‘matched’ and ‘unmatched’ bet actually meant. So we went back to the drawing board.

New bet slip!

First we reorganised the user card so the avatar was bigger and the account balance easier to read. Then we tidied up the betting slip with a new layout, removed some of the visual clutter and created cleaner headings. Rather than list the full team names in the match, we’re now showing a short code version of the team names to make it easier to scan.

We’ve also introduced new groupings. All your active bets are shown together at the top of the slip. If your bet isn’t fully matched by other Smarkets users then you’ll see the percentage matched in red. You can cancel unmatched bets with a little cross icon and if you’ve made bets at different odds then you’ll see a pop up window asking you which bet you want cancelled.

Rather than digging around account history pages to find out what happened to your settled bets, underneath your active bets we show your two most recently settled bets along with how much you won or lost.

These changes will make it a lot easier to see the state of your bets, but we’re always interested in your feedback so get in touch.

Written by Alex Lee

November 27, 2009 at 14:15

Alex Lee joins Smarkets

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1243478789_5c4dd309a3Smarkets is delighted to announce that Alex Lee [csensedesign.co.uk / Twitter] is Smarkets’ newest employee. Alex is a cycling-obsessed user experience specialist who arrives fresh off the plane from a year working on an American start-up.

He has worked with companies such as Yahoo!, RealNetworks, the BBC and Virgin Media. Alex has a record of successful and user-focused launches on some of the strongest brands in the UK, including Global’s Capital Radio and Yahoo! TV.

Smarkets is happy to have Alex on board…and we look forward to the inevitable Tour de France office sweepstakes!

Written by Jason Trost

September 18, 2009 at 10:32

Smarkets Launch Party

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Thank you very much to everyone who came Tuesday night! Hunter and I are very excited to release Smarkets, a simple and social way to bet, publicly for the first time. Smarkets is invite only at the moment. We will be sending out invite emails out over the next few weeks.

I’d also like to thank our co-sponsors of the evening, CSB Group. CSB has been instrumental in helping us get our company incorporated and applying for our gaming license in Malta

Other coverage:
Techfluff.tv and Russ’s Flickr set.

Written by Jason Trost

August 17, 2009 at 16:25

Posted in London Startups

Smarkets adds Ed Stone to the team

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Ed Stone

Originally uploaded by intranation

Smarkets continues to grow! I am pleased to announce that Ed Stone [Twitter] will be joining our team. Ed has been involved in the web industry for over ten years working as a developer and later manager. He brings a wealth of web expertise to Smarkets and has worked in both London and Syndey.

Prior to Smarkets, Ed was the Web Development Manager for Yahoo! Search Europe, and then Project Director at Squiz UK, introducing them to web standards and progressive enhancement. I am really happy Ed has decided to make Smarkets his new home!

Written by Jason Trost

August 10, 2009 at 18:44

Smarkets new office in the West End

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From N7 to W1W in London, Smarkets moves into its new office until the end of the year.

Written by Jason Trost

July 28, 2009 at 08:27