Matchbook has completed its takeover of Betdaq, bringing two of the oldest names in exchange betting under one roof for the first time. The deal was announced on the 14th of October, but no price has yet been made public.
Betdaq won’t carry on alongside its new owner. Exchange Platform Solutions, which runs the site, has told customers that there will be no markets available after the 21st of October, although accounts will stay open until the 4th of November so as to allow people to check statements and take out their remaining balances.
Those accounts will not move across to Matchbook, though, so anyone who wants to keep trading there will need to sign up as a new customer.
What Betdaq Customers Need to Know
Bets matched before the 14th of October that settle between the 21st of October and the 30th of November will be apparently honoured, whilst positions on events that are scheduled to finish after the 30th of November will be voided and the stakes handed back to the customer.
Matchbook have said that customer money will stay protected under both firms’ regulatory duties for the whole wind-down, so there’s no need to worry on that front.
Ronan McDonagh, Matchbook’s Chief Executive, said that Betdaq users will come first and that ‘their funds are safe, their options are clear’. He believes that merging the two customer bases will give punters better prices and more liquidity than either exchange could manage on their own.
A Long Road for Betdaq
Irish businessman Dermot Desmond founded Betdaq in 2000, making it one of the first exchanges anywhere in the world. Ladbrokes paid €30 million for it in 2013 before their parent company, Entain, sold it back to Desmond in the November of 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
Matchbook dates from 2004 and is operated by Triplebet Limited under a Gambling Commission licence. It launched easyBet with easyGroup in 2024 and has since moved into prediction markets through a tie-up with ADI PredictStreet.
The company ties this latest purchase to rising interest in peer-to-peer pricing, with prediction markets in the United States of America bringing that model to a much wider audience.