A lot of white label Betfair exchanges have popped up in recent years. This is due to the fact, that Betfair has to strictly follow laws and regulation, while the mirroring exchanges do not (or don't care). I don't know the conditions to be allowed to wear a "powered by Betfair" label, but Betfair itself will happily allow these exchanges to exist, because it brings some volume/liquidity to their markets and thus money in the end.
Betfair had to put a lot of geo-restrictions in place in the last years and as a consequence lost a lot of customers. All these customers - or those that are desperate enough - will have to go via these white label exchanges (WLE) now, in order to participate in trading on the biggest betting exchange in the world.
While the WLE make some money with commission and probably get a few bucks from Betfair, they have their very own and maybe risky business model. Betfair itself has no risk at all, since they just provide a platform, where interested people can bet against each other. But these WLE actually take some risk (20%) on their customer bets and trades.
Lets have a look and visualize. I placed a back for Bundesliga match Frankfurt - Augsburg on Friday in the HT/FT market at Orbit Exchange.
Back HT1/FT2 at odds of 1000 with a stake of 100,- Euro. Now what Orbit does, is, that they only send 80% of that bet to the Betfair market and take 20% of that bet for themselves.
Lets see how it looks at the Betfair market:
You can see my order for odds of 1000, but the stake is only 80,- Euro (some rounding differences I guess, thus it's actually 81,- Euro).
Lets assume that order gets matched and that game will indeed end HT1/FT2. Orbit will then credit 100,000,- Euro to my account and they would have to pay 20,000,- Euro of that from their money (since they took 20% risk on my bet themselves). If I lose the bet, 80,- Euro go to whoever actually matched my order and 20,- Euro will go into the pocket of Orbit Exchange.
Since most people lose with betting, this is a rather safe (additional) business model, but it can be exploited and you as a WLE operator better monitor closely what your customers do.
What does this mean for you as a punter on these exchanges ? Nothing.
What does this mean for your funds on these exchanges ? Be careful and make regular withdrawals.
How to use betting exchanges:Placing a back betPlacing a lay betThe commissionWhy you should bet/trade at exchanges