Dear xxxx
On Monday the 14th of April we will be introducing a charge aimed at encouraging customers to limit high levels of API and Web requests for data made simultaneously in the same second. Your current usage levels mean you could be affected by the charge. We hope that you are able to make some adjustments to your systems to avoid the charge and we look forward to helping you do this in any way we can.

Why are we introducing the Data Request Charge?

We believe that high levels of data requests are sometimes unnecessary. This might simply be because a customer has built a program that requests data when it doesn’t need to. This in turn may be because data requests have always been free so there hasn’t been a need to use data efficiently. The purpose of the charge is to align Betfair’s expenditure on data processing more closely with the betting needs of our customers.

How does the Data Request Charge work?

Charges apply to both API and website data requests. Only market data (for example market prices) and private betting data (for example current bets, P&L) requests are subject to the charge. At the end of every day, we will add up the total number of market and private data requests each customer made in each second and any customer making more than 20 data requests in one second will be charged 0.1p per data request above 20.

API calls and website refreshes send requests for different types and quantities of data. We therefore apply a weighting system to calculate the actual number of data requests made in each second by API calls or website refreshes. Almost all API market and private data calls are weighted 1 and website market and private data refreshes are weighted 2.

Any charge will be offset by both commission and implied commission (equivalent calculation to commission but in relation to net losses). Each customer’s account will be reviewed at the end of each day to see if a charge should be applied for that day or not. Full details of the charge may be found on the Betfair Charges webpage which is in the About Us section of the Betfair website.

Please email us at datausage@betfair.com if you have any questions.

Regards,


The Betfair Developers Program Team