What is Betconnect and how does Betconnect work?
Not since Betfair arrived on the scene has there been such a punter positive new betting platform. I believe Betconnect is a truly innovative concept with the potential to change how we bet in the UK.
Whether you’re a recreational bettor, a professional bettor, a layer, a trader, a matched bettor or a tipster subscriber, there are positives for everyone.
2 of the biggest frustrations faced by punters today are:
- Restricted accounts if you are a winning punter
- Paying for Tipsters who fail to deliver the profits they promise
Betconnect is a unique Betting Exchange that offers an innovative solution to both these issues. As well as opening up other opportunities to make a profit from your betting.
How does Betconnect work?
As with other Betting Exchanges, you are either a backer, placing bets, or a layer, acting as the bookmaker accepting bets.
As a layer, or Punter as Betconnect labels a layer, one of the key differences is that you have visibility of the source of the money. The backer’s profile or Pro as it is deemed on the Betconnect site is visible to you at the time they offer a Bet Request for you to accept.
You can decide to accept and either stand the bet or follow the Betconnect Pro by placing a bet on the same selection on a different platform.
As a backer or Pro, you can place your bets without the dreaded account restrictions that get applied to any successful punter on most Sportsbooks.
Undoubtedly it is a very innovative and exciting new market entrant and set to shape the way we bet in the coming years.
Sounds a bit complicated? It’s not really. Read on and I’ll explain why you should be using the Betconnect site.
Which type of Betconnect account is right for you
When you sign up to Betconnect, you choose whether to have a Pro account or a Punter account.
A Pro account is essentially a backers account, a Punter account is a layers account. You can sign up for both a Pro and a Punter account.
Betconnect Pro account
If you have been restricted by online Sportsbooks or Retail Bookmakers, then a Pro account is for you.
Once your account is set up you can create Bet Requests, this is submitting a back bet for matching.
- Select your sport, market and selection
- Select the price of your selection from the odds available. The prices are real-time prices pulled from the range of bookmakers
- Set your stake for the bet and then submit your Bet Request
The Betconnect technology then splits your Bet Request total stake into smaller bets and pushes it out to the Betconnect Punters for matching.
Betconnect Punter Account
Once you have set up your Betconnect Punter account, you are ready to receive Bet Requests submitted by the Pros.
To get started:
- Push the Betconnect button to receive a Bet Request
- Decide what you want to do with the Bet Request. You can review the profile of the Pro before you take one of the following steps.
- Reject the Bet Request
- Accept the Bet Request
If you accept the bet from the Pro, you can then choose to:
- Stand the bet. if the bet wins, you lose and pay the Pro
- Follow the Pro by backing the bet Request elsewhere on a different platform
If you chose to follow the Pros bet and back it elsewhere on a different platform, it opens up several options for you. This is where it gets interesting and potentially profitable for the Betconnect Punter.
Benefits of a Betconnect Punter account
On a Punter account, once you receive a Pros Bet Request you have 8 minutes to decide whether you wish to lay the Bet Request. This allows you the time to search other platforms to see if there is a profitable option open for you.
Let me talk through some of the profitable angles you can take if laying the Pros Bet Request.
Back the Pros bet on a different betting platform for the same stake
Back the bet elsewhere for the same stake. Why? On the Betting Exchanges or on a Sportsbook, you may be able to get a bigger price than the one you’ve laid to the Pro. Thus creating yourself a zero risk, free bet.
In the images below, you’ll see I was able to lay Stagehand at 5/1 by accepting a Bet Request on Betconnect. The same horse was available for me to back on Betfair at 13.5/1.
In this case, Stagehand lost and I broke even. But, I created a risk free bet on Stagehand. Had he gone on to win, I would have paid out £15 on Betconnect to the Pro and won £40.50 (less a small commission) from my back bet on Betfair.
You could also structure your bet as to guarantee a profit whatever the outcome, in effect creating an arb.
If the price is bigger on the Betting Exchange, why didn’t the Betconnect Pro just place his bet on the Betting Exchange?
It’s about liquidity, or more to the point the ‘lack’ of liquidity on the Betting Exchanges, particularly in the morning of a race before the exchange markets have started to fill.
Quite simply, the Pro may be having a large bet and there may not be enough money on the Exchanges to accommodate their bet, and certainly not without spooking the market. Whereas on Betconnect the Pros bet is split into smaller sizes for several Punters to accept.
Betconnect Punters can then take advantage of the smaller unit stake by being able to place this smaller bet in low liquidity situations on a Betting Exchange.
Matched betting opportunities
If Matched betting is your modus operandi then, you can activate new account free bet credits with zero or minimal risk to your cash.
For example, using Bet365’s new account opening offer where they offer to match your initial deposit with free bet credits up to £100.
To activate the £100 free bet credits, you are required to stake £100 of your cash first. You can do this with minimal or even zero risk to your cash by laying £100 of Pros Bet Request stakes on Betconnect, then backing the same selection on Bet365 for the same amounts. Once you have turned over £100 your Bet365 £100 free bet credits are released and ready to use.
Taking advantage of Best Odds Guaranteed
The majority online Sportsbooks offer Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG) on horse racing. You also find BOG in some retail Betting shops, on a smaller selection of races.
If you lay a Pros Bet Request on Betconnect and then back that selection at the same price for the same stake with a Bookmaker offering BOG. If the horse goes onto win at a bigger price, BOG will be triggered on your bet and you’ll get paid out more than you pay the Pro on Betconnect.
It creates the perfect betting scenario, zero risk and potential profit.
Bet365 ITV Racing 4/1 Offer
Take advantage of Bet365’s ITV racing offer. Accept and lay a Bet Request from a Pro on Betconnect on a live ITV race up to a stake of £50 and back the Pro’s selection for the same stake with Bet365.
Should the Pros bet request lose, you will break even. If the Pros Bet Request wins and you’ve backed at a bigger price with Bet365 then you make a slight profit on the bets, at the same price you break even and at a lesser price a slight loss. The real positive if the Pros Bet Request wins is that you release a free bet on the next ITV live race for the value of your unit stake up to a maximum of £50.
Follow a Pro and back the bet for a bigger stake elsewhere
If you follow Tipsters, then following Betconnect Pros may be an attractive proposition.
Betconnect allows you to follow profitable Pros. No subscription fees to pay, as you pay to access some Tipsters advice. And if you’ve ever been frustrated by Tipsters giving their selections and claiming their profits on prices that are near impossible to get, then again Betconnect will be a welcome initiative.
You can view the actual betting history of all the Betconnect Pros.
If you are following a profitable Betconnect Pro who has a proven ROI then you may want to try and profit from their selections. Firstly by accepting their Bet Request, then having your bet elsewhere but for a greater stake than you have laid the Betconnect Pro for.
If the selection wins, you win more from the third party Sportsbook/Bookmaker than you have to pay the Betconnect Pro for his successful Bet Request.
You are probably thinking, ‘why don’t I just reject the Pros Bet Request and then go and have the bet elsewhere myself?’.
Nice idea, but it won’t work. It will affect your Punter rating and Betconnect will move you to the back of the queue. If they see repeated activity like this, you’ll stop receiving the Pros Bet Requests altogether.
Other angles by which to make a profit on Betconnect
The above are just some of the ways you can profit from using the Betconnect platform, and are far from an exhaustive list.
Where you can lay bets at Bookmakers prices, it offers you plenty of opportunities to profit. Particularly when you consider some of the offers and enhancements from the Bookmakers and Sportsbooks.
Bookmakers ‘money-back offers’ for example on fallers or ‘finished second’ mean you can create scenarios where you are paid or refunded your stake on your back bets with the Bookmakers, but the Pros aren’t granted that concession on the bets you have laid them on Betconnect.
Similarly, you can be advantaged by Bookmaker offers of enhanced place terms, either extra places or better fractions on the place part of an each-way bet.
Like I’ve said, not an exhaustive list and plenty of potential angles to exploit.
What details of the Betconnect Pros betting history are visible
You can review the Betconnect Pros profile before deciding on a course of action. Either, reject the Bet Request, or accept and lay or follow.
Benefits of Betconnect for Pros
Pro backers, if you’re a serious pro backer you’ll be familiar with the ongoing war with UK bookmakers. Anyone who’s ever been involved in trying to get significant sums of money on a horse with bookmakers, either online or in their shops will be familiar with the challenges.
Having been either side of these battle lines, including a good few years as a bookmaker I’m qualified to talk about the tactics employed on both sides when it comes to people trying to get large stakes on.
Online, it’s about trying to drip-feed money on through multiple accounts. Bookmakers can gather accurate data from these accounts which are then used to make trading decisions on these accounts.
In the retail shops, the monitoring becomes a bit more subjective, more things can go wrong in collating accurate data on a punter. The scenario plays out along these lines…..
In retail, bookmakers monitor larger staking customer business, tagging their bets at acceptance. If profitable, the punter will likely have restrictions then placed on their bets. Either SP only, not allowed to take a price, reduced stake, win only (no each way) or ultimately complete refusal of the bet.
To get the money on, they recruit a team of runners to disperse their bet in smaller unit stakes around several shops undetected. The bookmaker will monitor this activity and attempt to identify patterns, hand-writing and faces associated with these bets and then try to limit struck stakes.
It will work in patches until the backer reorganises their operation and the battle starts again.
Betconnect, with its model and technology, shifts the balance of this ongoing battle significantly in the backer’s favour. And gives the bookmaker a headache with shrewd winning customer money hitting their books in small bite-size chunks from varying sources. The perfect model for a restricted Pro bettor.
How much commission do Betconnect charge?
For Punters, there is no commission charge. On other Betting Exchanges, commissions charges vary but can be as high as 5%.
For Pro accounts the maximum commission charged is 3%, which is calculated in 2 ways dependant on at what price the bet is struck at.
The commission is calculated on the Pros stake if the odds of the selection are even money (2.0 in decimals) or greater. If the price of your selection is less than evens (1.99 in decimals or less) then the commission is charged on the bets potential profit.
For example:
£50 @ 2/1 – commission is £50 x 3% = £1.50
£50 @ 2/5 – commission is £20 x 3% = £0.60
Betconnect maximum and minimum stakes
The minimum stake for a Pro is £5 with no top end maximum. For a Punter, the minimum stake is £1.
As a punter, in your account settings, you can set the amount for the Bet Requests that will be pushed to you for consideration. This ranges from a liability of a maximum of £50 right up to £1000.
What sports do Betconnect offer markets on?
Currently Betconnect offer markets on 14 Sports, more will be added in time as the platform becomes more established.
You can customise your account and as a Punter, you then only receive Bet Requests from the sports you are interested in.
Will Betconnect be a success?
It is an incredibly difficult market for new entrants to break into and become established. Plenty has tried in the past decade and fallen by the wayside, squeezed by the dominant players and against a difficult headwind of government and legislative changes that have tightened up operators margins.
Betconnect, I believe will succeed and I think thrive because ultimately the customer chooses who to bet with and Betconnect’s model delivers on different levels for different customers.
Industry change
The industry, from a customer perspective, needs change and someone like Betconnect. Some of the tactics deployed by some of the established industry big players are questionable, with regards to how they treat the customer, particularly the shrewder ones.
You don’t have to be a long term profitable punter to get restricted these days, just show the traits of a profitable bettor. Just backing a few runners that shorten in price or hail from a certain stable known for a few gambles is enough to have your bets restricted to paltry amounts.
The bottom line profit of UK bookmakers with a high street presence is under severe pressure since the £2 stake restriction on FOBT’s. My personal view is that the way they do business with their horse racing customers needs to change for their business to thrive and move forward.
It’s driven by accountants and budget setters within these firms. Long gone are the days of Bookmakers having and standing an opinion. They set a target margin, and pressure is put on the traders to deliver. Consequently, they clamp down on any unprofitable trait.
The Betconnect model
Where the Betconnect model works is by splitting the Pro’s requested stakes into smaller stakes, the Punter then passes these stakes onto the traditional bookmakers. These Punters can get on with the traditional books, whereas the Pro’s larger stakes would be liable to restriction before an inevitable cut in the selection’s price.
The beauty of the Betconnect model is ultimately the traditional bookmakers and sportsbooks are paying the price for bets coming through the Betconnect site. It’s very smart indeed.
All the big bookmakers have budgeted margins they aim to achieve by product. When they see a hit on the gross win margins on horse racing because Pro’s money is being filtered into their books by the Betconnect model then they will be keen to protect that margin. It will be interesting to observe how this plays out over the next couple of years.
Betfair shook the industry when it arrived on the scene. Back then the bookmakers had the FOBT cash cow so declined to fight back with a competitive offer. The cash cow has wandered out of the field now. Traditional bookmakers need to smarten up their offer, otherwise, new entrants like Betconnect are going to steal or damage their business.
All this is fantastic news if you are a punter, greater competition for your £pound can only lead to better value.
Tough as it is for new firms to break into the industry and become established, I believe Betconnect is an innovative punter centric platform that’s here to stay.
Betconnect New Punter and New Pro sign up offers
