Bizarre betting scenes as Betfair forced to suspend market

THERE were bizarre scenes in the in-running betting world during racing at Leopardstown yesterday with a freakish amount traded on Betfair in the woodiesdiy.com Christmas Hurdle. A total of £1,642,094 (€1,963,000) was matched at 28-1 on Voler La Vedette, who went off the 13-8 favourite on-course and won very easily.

Even more strangely, the Betfair graph showed over £21m (€25.1m) was offered to back Colm Murphy’s mare at those odds, even though she was always in contention and looked the obvious winner even before thefinal flight. This meant one layer could potentially have lost £600m €717m) in only a few minutes if all of themoney had been matched.

Betfair suspended the market in order to investigate, with many of the exchange’s members in a state of shock on the website’s forum. After lengthy discussions, it was revealed this was due to a technical error, and that all bets on the event would be cancelled.