Book description
The fascinating tale of how one company spawned a huge international
business success story, created legions of new gamblers and
revolutionised the worlds of gambling and sport for ever.
In 2000 a company called Betfair, founded by Andrew Black and Ed Wray,
began trading. Since then, the brainchild of these two contrasting
English innovators has meant the world of gambling, sport, the Internet,
government attitudes to betting and public perceptions of what is behind
a 'flutter' haven't been the same.
Betfair is an Internet betting exchange, which pairs up via the web
those who want to have a bet ('backers') with those who want to take one
('layers'), cutting out the traditional middleman, namely the bookmaker.
The company's success - Betfair today is one of the world's ten biggest
companies operating on the web - has fuelled exponential growth in
Internet betting. What's more, the operation has revolutionised the way
the globe gambles, forcing bookmakers to change, altered how sport deals
with corruption based around betting and how governments worldwide treat
betting, and caused shifts in cultural and social attitudes to betting generally.
You Bet considers the Betfair story, a remarkable tale of how a simple
idea tapped into the modern-day global psyche for betting and became a
multi-billion dollar company. But much more than that, You Bet considers
the worldwide impact, culturally and socially, of the explosion in
Internet betting in which Betfair has been both an agent for change and
a beneficiary of evolving attitudes to betting.
This vibrant book takes you to the heart of the colourful world of
betting, features a range of characters with personality and opinions in
proportion and offers unique analysis of why people gamble. The book is
both an inspirational - and aspirational - tale of how the dream of two
men became a reality. Colin Cameron has an MA in Economics from the
University of Cambridge and has written about the business of betting
for over 15 years. He is the author of seven books, a BBC broadcaster
and a regular contributor to the Financial Times and New York Times.
