Betfair makes cloud-based app platform from betting exchange

Onlive gambling website Betfair has launched a new cloud-based platform-as-a-service designed to allow third party developers create their own betting apps on the company’s infrastructure.

Dubbed “App Cloud”, the service rolls out later this week with football club Manchester United as one of its first customers.

While the company has permitted developers to use APIs to provide live data for use in their own products, this marks a further move which will see developers able to build Betfair-hosted interfaces on their own websites, “offering their own customers unique Betfair products designed and built by themselves.”

Currently, non Betfair-owned and non-Betfair built interfaces operating off Betfair’s API contribute approximately 20 per cent of Betfair’s sports exchange revenues. The company expects this figure to grow, as the process of building these external applications is made easier for developers and more accessible for their customers.

Around 70,000 Betfair customers bet on its Exchange via third-party betting applications, with approximately 50 million bets and 10 billion data requests going through these applications each week. Many creators of these applications charge their users a subscription fee. Betfair said it compensated third-party developers by entering a revenue-sharing agreement with them on new customers who sign up to Betfair via their products.

“Our App Cloud will further enhance the dynamism and productivity of Betfair’s developer community and in turn make more Betfair products accessible to more customers,” said Carel Vosloo, Betfair’s App Cloud Director.

He added that having a vibrant developer community would enable Betfair to “outsource ingenuity and facilitate further innovation in its product range.”

The Betfair App Cloud will be open to developers from Wednesday 18 April.