Betfair Australia

Betfair UK was founded in 2000 by Andrew Black and Edward Wray. In 2004, it signed a joint venture with Australia's Publishing and Broadcasting Limited to launch the Australian exchange.^[1][2] In February 2006, Betfair received a non-exclusive licence from the Tasmanian Gaming Commission to operate Australia’s first betting exchange. Later that year, its market operations team managed the first market, followed soon by the first telephone bets handled by Betfair Australia staff.

In November 2005, the Government of Tasmania licensed Betfair to operate in the state. It was the company's second licence outside the UK, following Malta, with later approvals in Austria and Germany.

In August 2006, the first bet was matched on the Australian exchange. Since then, over 350 million bets have been placed, more than two million calls handled, and around 400,000 unique markets settled.

A ban on betting exchanges took effect in Western Australia on 29 January 2007, but Betfair successfully argued that the law violated the Australian Constitution.^[3]

In a unanimous verdict on 27 March 2008, the High Court of Australia ruled that the two legislative provisions banning betting exchanges and restricting the use of Western Australian race lists were invalid, as they imposed a protectionist burden on interstate trade in breach of section 92 of the Commonwealth Constitution.^[4]

However, in the 2012 High Court case of Betfair Pty Limited v Racing New South Wales, Betfair's appeal, against a newly enacted fee to access New South Welsh vital race field information, was rejected.^[5] The Court held that the relevant law would have no discriminatory or protectionist effect on interstate trade, thereby complying with section 92 of the Constitution of Australia, and that Betfair had not proven that the fee would cause significant economic damage (not to the extent of the appellants in Castlemaine Tooheys Ltd v South Australia).^[6]

In August 2014 Betfair completed the sale of their 50% stake in Betfair Australia to venture partner Crown Resorts, one of Australia's largest gaming and entertainment groups.^[7] The stake was valued at £5.5m. In 2008 it was calculated that Betfair handle more transactions than all of Europe's stock exchanges combined – an average of 5 million a day, 99.9% are successfully completed in under one second. Betfair Australia set a world record for most money traded in a single market in March 2015 when $184,383,446 was matched in-play for the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup semi-final between South Africa and New Zealand. In a see-sawing match favouritism changed 31 times throughout the game with South Africa trading at $1.58 in the last over and then going on to lose with $8.58mil matched on them at less than $1.35.