Summary: This week we welcome Matchbook.com CEO Mark Brosnan onto the podcast to talk about the ever-evolving world of betting exchanges. Mark shares his views about the betting industry, how Matchbook works as a high volume/low margin exchange and and the steps they are taking to stay ahead of the curve. Punting Insights You'll Find What changes have occurred since new management came on in 2011. The Matchbook has in place to draw interest in their service. How Matchbook can operate on incredibly low margins. What technological advances are being made in their product services. The future of Matchbook according to Mark. Today's Guest: Mark Brosnan of Matchbookwho are offering 0% commission on soccer until April 1st and in an exclusive offer for Champion Picks subscribers you can also bet on basketball at no commission until March 17th. But you must sign up via this link or you will be paying the normal rate. Mark's Closing Tip: " The best learning curve is essentially to come on and to place a straight wager, see how that works out. " Get the Transcript: Episode 35 : The New Betting Exchange Landscape with Mark Brosnan Welcome to Betting 360, your number one source for horse racing and sports betting insights. Coming around the bend is your host David Duffield, with another expert view to give you the winning edge. David Duffield: Hi, this is David Duffield and welcome to another episode of the Betting 360 podcast. This week, my special guest is Mark Brosnan the CEO of Matchbook.com. They are a rapidly growing betting exchange and I think that’s a very healthy thing for the sports betting industry to have a competitor that’s going to give Betfair a run for their money. They’ve come in with a low margin model which is great news for punters because it’s only a one percent commission. Thank you for coming on today Mark and can you just kick things off by telling listeners what Matchbook is? Mark Brosnan: Matchbook is what we classify as the world’s fastest growing betting exchange. It’s been around for 10 years and now under new ownership since 2011. Matchbook’s core competency up until 2011 was more of a B-to-B type offering, a clearing house as you would for large institutional type players for sportsbooks for clearing larger positions or hedging large positions that they didn’t want to keep under book going into game time particularly on North American sports and tennis. Under new ownership came a lot of new investment and a new focus on bringing this big liquidity pool created by the institutional players to the customers. I think our goal and our main strategy in Matchbook is to turn Matchbook into the world’s largest provider of high volume low margin liquidity. The mechanism we use to create a product is Matchbook and Matchbook is a betting exchange like a number of other betting exchanges out there. I myself have been in the industry for 10 years. I’ve seen 32 different betting exchanges try and fail and there’s only a handful of betting exchanges providing any meaningful liquidity out there and Matchbook is close to the top of that list. David Duffield: Okay, you mentioned 2011 was a fairly dramatic change in the betting landscape with what happened in the US. That’s the time that new investors and a new management team came in for Matchbook? Mark Brosnan: Absolutely, so the investors are a UK group of investors, very well financed and active in the gaming industry previously. They saw an opportunity in terms of the way that other liquidity providers in the industry had kind of shifted their focus from providing a low margin product. You are looking at some of our competitors introducing premium charges or increasing their commission rates and they’d also seen a large opportunity for low margin high volume betting in Asia with Asian handicaps being a very popular offering in Asia. There was a void in the market really in Europe for that kind of product offering.
