Money Watch – Personal Finance Blog

TechCrunch has the news that Betable, a site where users can bet on anything, has secured $3million in venture capital to progress its efforts to become a “Twitter for gambling”.

Betable is the first place where you can bet with friends, family, colleagues and others on anything that interests you. With thousands of bets to choose from in our betting marketplace and the ability to create your own bets, you’ll never run out of exciting things to bet on. What’s more, Betable lets you invite your friends and the greater betting community to bet with you so you can share the excitement and have some friendly competition.

Social Networks

The idea behind Betable is that users (who must be over the age of 18, and within a country where gambling is legal) create a bet on anything they can think of, and this bet is then spread to friends and connections on Facebook (you can even register for the site using your Facebook login details), Twitter etc, as well as other Betable users. Gradually the pot of money will begin to grow, and of course, a group of users will back the correct outcome and win a share of the pot.

Money is collected upfront so there should always be a payout, and Betable take 10% of the profits on bets, whilst the user who came up with the bet gets 30% – a good incentive to create bets.

Casual Betting

It’s an interesting model, aiming for a more casual gambler than a site such as Betfair, which is a lot more serious betting venue. The social media integration is a nice touch, and it’s also a brilliant marketing strategy for Betable, potentially spreading the bets and  ultimately increasing the size of the pots on each bet.

One issue they’re hoping to avoid is gangs of users who are in on a dodgy bet, but get other users to bump up the pot before they take the winnings.  Betable do however require ID checks and provide a satisfaction rating for each user, so they claim that you’d need to be a sophisticated scammer to get away with anything.

Looking at some of the current bets, it also looks like it could be difficult to agree on the outcome of some bets, although I guess Betable’s decision is final and in cases where a result is disputed, the bet will be cancelled, but Betable will still get its cut, and of course will have had the money sitting in their account for a period of time, earning interest.

As one of the comments on TechCrunch suggests, where there could be real interest for this, given the social media integration, is for some of the big, live, non-sporting events, such as X Factor or Big Brother to get involved – there may even be quite a bit of money in it for the programme producers themselves.

What do you think of Betable? Will you be having a flutter in between updating your Facebook status or Tweeting, or do you think gambling is a mugs game? Let us know in the comments below.