Betfair site crash on Saturday forced 'bookmakers to be bookmakers'

On-course layer Barry Pinnington was revelling in the days of old at Bangor on Saturday after Betfair's site went down for more than two hours, forcing "bookmakers to be bookmakers for a change".

The Betfair exchange, which shapes the on-course market, was offline between 2.55pm and 5.07pm on Saturday, which required the layers to revert to the traditional principles of bookmaking, involving pricing a race and adjusting odds to manage liabilities.

Pinnington enjoyed a challenge likely to have been replicated across Britain on Saturday and said: "When the exchange goes down, or is very weak, it forces bookmakers to play bookmakers for a change.

"Quite often they [bookmakers] are slaves to the exchanges so it is quite refreshing to see the prices all over the place, and I think the punters loved looking around for the best price in the ring."

Not all bookmakers were so comfortable without having the exchanges to hedge into, and Pinnington added: "It was quite humorous with tales of some bookmakers who never stand a bet all of a sudden having losers [in the book] – there were some white faces around. That was quite amusing."

Barry Pinnington: on-course bookmaker enjoyed the challenge at BangorCredit: Barry Pinnington

Betfair was offline for the highest-profile races, including the Lockinge Stakes, and spokesman Barry Orr said on Monday: "There were site issues on Saturday, which meant we had to take the website down.

"Sadly it affected a large book of afternoon racing, which is not ideal, but we worked to have it back up as soon as possible. The system and our team are constantly evolving to try to ensure there are no issues in the backend."

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