What Is Betfair Premium Charge?
The Betfair premium charge is a Betfair Exchange commission system that allows Betfair to take slightly more commission from the players that are very successful on the platform.
It’s only a small proportion of players that have to pay the fee, less than one in 200 bettors pay extra.
How Much Premium Charge Will I Pay?
Betfair will charge those accounts that are selected to pay the premium charge the lower of the two below amounts.
- 20% of the previous week’s gross profits minus the total charges generated during the week.
- 20% gross profits minus total charges generated during the lifetime of the account.
How Does Betfair Define Total Charges?
The Total Charges that Betfair use to calculate both the threshold for Betfair Premium Charge and the amount to pay for Premium Charge is a specific definition from Betfair, as below:
“All commission generated by Betfair as a result of your betting plus any premium charges you’ve incurred.”
How Does Betfair Select Accounts For Premium Charge?
Bettors selected for the premium charge are selected based on a few criteria that includes the following:
- A profitable account.
- Total charges paid being less than 20% of gross profits.
- Bets in more than 250 markets.
- Profits made of lots of wins, as large wins of over 50% of an account’s profits will be excluded from the calculation.
- Profits of at least over £1,000 of the premium charge threshold.
How To Avoid Betfair Premium Charge
From the above list, you can deduce that there are more than a few things to bear in mind when trying to avoid these extra charges.
- Make bets in a narrow range of betting markets.
- Bet big on very long odds, as the huge returns on long odds can more than half your total eligible gross profits. An example of one of these bets would be if you win a bet so profitable that will increase your gross profits by more than double.
Note that Betfair are aware of customers using multiple accounts to avoid being selected to pay the Betfair premium charge, whether as a set of split business accounts, or private accounts and are able to identify these accounts and treat them as one account.
Premium Charges At Higher Rates
These charges will apply to less than 1 in 1,000 Betfair Exchange Accounts and will be applied only to accounts that satisfy the below conditions:
- Lifetime profits (including all commission and premium charges) over £250,000.
- Commission paid is less than 40% of lifetime gross profits.
- Bets in more than 1,000 markets.
The rates are variable depending on the ratio of gross profits to lifetime commission.
- Less than 5% of gross profits paid in commission incurs a 60% charge.
- 5-10% of gross profits paid in commission incurs a 50% charge.
- 10% of gross profits paid in commission incurs a 40% charge.
How Are Old Accounts Affected?
The premium charge allowance may have been met before 12/10/2009 for any profit accrued in the account before this date, and this is made more likely, as the charges over 20% of profit stipulation are reduced to 0% of profit created before this date.
Although this means that gross profits before this date will be measured, the charges won’t be accrued before the implementation of the premium charge from 12/10/2009 and will only absorb your allowance.
