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Can I see roughly what price I am likely to be on at before the off when I bet at SP?
How are the Near/Far projections calculated?
What is the projected SP if no money is wagered at the Starting Price?

  Can I see roughly what price I am likely to be on at before the off when I bet at SP?

Yes. You will not know what the Betfair Starting Price is until the event starts, as additional bets placed before then will affect the calculation of the price. However Betfair will offer two calculations of the projected SP:

  1. Projected SP - which indicates what the SP would be if the market were to suspend now, this is also known as the 'Near Price' calculation.
  2. Near/Far Odds - The closer it is to the start of the race, the more accurate these prices are likely to be due to more liquidity and up to date information.

Please see the next FAQs to see how these are calculated.

What is Near/Far?

These are two ways of projecting the SP. The Far price is calculated by using only the SP bets and assumes that there will be no Exchange market at the time the market is determined. The Near price assumes that the current Exchange market can be used. In effect, the Near price is what the SP odds would be if the event started at the current moment. When only projected odds are displayed, the Near price is used.

How are the Near/Far projections calculated?

The Near Price is calculated using all of the available money on the site at SP as well as matching money on the same selection in the Exchange. To understand this properly, you first need to understand the calculation of the Far Price, which only takes into account the SP bets that have been requested.

Excluding money requested at a fixed price on the Exchange, if there are £1000 worth of backers’ stakes on a selection at SP and £6000 worth of layers’ liabilities, we could match them at 7.0 (6/1).

If, however, there were £6000 worth of backers’ stakes on the selection and £1000 worth of layers’ liabilities, we could match them at 1.17 (1/6). These are calculations of the Far Price.

As the market suspends to be turned in-play, the system determines which unmatched Exchange bets could be included in the reconciliation to determine a fairer price. For example if there were £1000 of SP backers’ stakes and £6000 of SP layers’ liabilities, but there were also £1000 of unmatched back bets on the Exchange available to lay at a price of 5.0 then it would be unfair to match SP layers at an SP of 7.0 while backers willing to take 5.0 remained unmatched. Therefore some of those bets (£500) would be included in the reconciliation, allowing us to satisfy more customer orders. With £1500 of backers’ stakes and £6000 of layers’ liabilities we would determine an SP of 5.0.

The price calculated by including unmatched Exchange bets is the Near Price.

What is the projected SP if no money is wagered at the Starting Price?

The system would find the halfway point between the best available odds to back and lay and show this as the projected SP.
 


 
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