Betfair Premium Charge

News, chat and debate about the Betfair betting exchange.
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3virgul14
Posts: 84
Joined: Wed May 26, 2010 8:28 am
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In the last 5 years, I have paid well over 100.000 pounds in terms of PC to betfair and a large chunk of this was when i was under %20 charges. In the last 1 year I am at %40 and believe me it destroys your profits and motivation.

To see you are taxed so highly every wednesday morning, you pay thousands for providing liquidity in the markets where you work your ass off with thousands of manually fired trades and transactions.. After all that difficulty and stress, BF literally stealing %40 of what you made, for what???

Being a monopoly is not a good thing..

Weirdest thing is I was never offered anything from anyone..Not even a single email from betfair for thanking me to pay one of their employees salary every single month!!

I came to a point recently to quit this and look into other trading opportunities..If anyone knows a good platform for trading forex, binary, stocks and precious materials, please send me a PM.
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megarain
Posts: 2041
Joined: Thu May 16, 2013 1:26 pm
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This lack of motivation, for manual traders especially, is starting to hurt Betfair .. at least I assume it is, as they have started some PC trials/re-started ad campaigns. We knew from the last annual report, the sportsbook grew a lot, the exchange didnt.

Liquidity from manual traders is dropping, and one by one, as we migrate to other sites, their competitors get stronger.

There is a new PC trial for basketball .. as they try and grow overseas (especially US) markets. They seem to get, that liquidity providers of live sport, need incentives.

My personal turnover, has dropped off a cliff, as I find other sites to market-make -- whether I want to get-up, in early hrs, to trade this stuff, is another question.
Bluesky
Posts: 420
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:26 pm

3virgul14 wrote: I came to a point recently to quit this and look into other trading opportunities..If anyone knows a good platform for trading forex, binary, stocks and precious materials, please send me a PM.
Just wanted to make a couple of points on this you might want to consider (I'm not defending BFs PC charge in anyway, I personally think its disgusting)

Pont 1. From what I have read, and from my experience in financial markets, sports trading is a lot easier than financial trading. So even though you have been very successful trading sports markets, you might not be equally successful when it comes to financial trading.

Point 2. I am not a tax expert but I think I am right in saying that sports trading profits are not taxable, (the government count it as gambling). Financial trading profits are taxable, so you might find that if you become a successful financial trader that you don't have to worry about the PC charge, but you will have to pay income tax, which is likely to be at the highest bracket. Hopefully if I am wrong about this tax situation someone in the know can explain how it works.
iambic_pentameter
Posts: 443
Joined: Wed May 18, 2016 1:24 pm

With financial trading you have a couple of options:

1) You can use Spread Betting firms which, at the current time, are exempt from tax in the UK. Also, my understanding is that they don't limit your accounts either.

2) I 'think' that with financial trading, you'd pay capital gains tax based on your profits.

As always with matters financial, seek the advice of a professional.
Danish Bettor
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 12:00 pm

Hi all

Being a newbie on Trading, I only recently heard about the Premium Charge which obviously is a huge let down for anyone trading seriously. There are a number of things I don't quite understand on this subject.

First of all, is the PC not deducted automatically as comission but only calculated on a weekly/periodic basis? What if I won a great sum and then decided to withdraw it all - would I then technically be owing Betfair cash (I assume they would calculate it before any withdrawal though)?

Secondly, I don't understand the comission calculations from an earlier post. As it was written, there is an "implied" commision of 3% on a losing trade - what is that? To my knowledge we don't pay commisions on losing trades and why is it different from the commision on the winning trade? I don't get how you can increase the commision paid to Betfair, since it's static at 5% (or lower for bettors with higer generated volumes, I believe), but that has obviously something to do with this calculation.

Sorry for sounding like an amateur but this PC stuff is confusing. :? :)
iambic_pentameter
Posts: 443
Joined: Wed May 18, 2016 1:24 pm

Hi Danish

Seasons Greetings :)

If you are a newbie, I'd focus more on learning how the markets work than being too concerned about the premium charge.

Once you get to a point where you are profitable, then you should consider it but until then, I'd put it in the background.

Best of luck with your trading.

Iambic
Danish Bettor
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 12:00 pm

Hi Iambic

Yeah, I won't be faced with the PC anytime soon, so for now it's just a theoretical/hypothetical issue for me and in all fairness it's not something that keep me awake at night yet :)

Eventually, if things go as planned, it should be something I face, so I was just wondering how it was calculated, but it's not an immediate concern, granted. Main focus is of course to develop the trading strategies, but if the PC is as high as 40% or even 60% then the idea of going full time may be dead from the start and that is pretty sad.
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Euler
Posts: 24702
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: Bet Angel HQ

There is almost nobody paying 60%, tiny numbers on 50% but if you stray into the higher rate bracket you should never really be paying more than 40%.

People like me that were on the higher rate when it was introduced were hit the hardest but on your journey to higher rates you will accrue commission which will push back d-day further into the future.

Like it was said above, if you start earning consistently enough to hit £2-300k in earnings then start asking at that point.
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Naffman
Posts: 5626
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2013 5:46 am

What's better generating more commission or hedging bets to try and 'lose' on BF but that comes with its own risks as well!

Just seems a total mess trying to focus on trading but knowing the 40-60% is looming and you know you have to do something about it...
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Euler
Posts: 24702
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: Bet Angel HQ

There are lots of break-even strategies you can pursue to delay its onset. I didn't have the chance to prepare, I was just hit by it without warning and there was nothing I could do to mitigate it.
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DRED1
Posts: 131
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:00 am
Location: London

What a wonderful problem.
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ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

Naffman wrote:
Fri Oct 20, 2017 3:19 pm
Just seems a total mess trying to focus on trading but knowing the 40-60% is looming and you know you have to do something about it...
If you can find a business model with lower overheads and the same 0% income tax rate then I'd love to here about it.
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jamesedwards
Posts: 2234
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:16 pm

It's just dawned on me that I am heading very quickly towards qualifying for the Betfair Premium Charge. Big :(

I've never been exposed to this before and I'm yet to pay anything due to my long account history and built-up lifetime commission paid.

From what I can understand once I recover my account P&L to a position where lifetime gross profit is more than five times my lifetime commission paid I will begin to pay a premium charge to top up my commission to 20% of gross profit for each and every week.

This is bad bad bad!

In this forum's experience:
1) will I be lumped with this charge from the moment I reach the above milestone or does it take them a while to decide that I should be paying?
2) does anyone have any advice on ways to minimise the impact of this impending tax?

Thanks in advance for any help.
Peadair
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2018 4:07 pm

Peter Webb has a good video on the subject, Caan Berry also. Good luck.
Emmson
Posts: 3363
Joined: Mon Feb 29, 2016 6:47 pm

Did Betfair take away your Premium Page Portal like they did mine about 18 months ago and I have never seen it since? Was wondering if that is their policy towards those who are in profit but not at Premium Charge levels.
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