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28 Part 1 Introduction

Figure 1.9 Betfair peer-to-peer gambling exchange

7 Betfair reported that for the year ending 30 April 2007, it had 650 employees and an annual turnover in
excess of £180 million with operating profit of £35 million based on 18 million ‘active player days’ which is
a key performance measure derived from the 433,000 active customers and an average 9 player-days per
month per active customer. International revenues are growing most rapidly and contributed 23 per cent
of exchange revenues compared with 18 per cent in the previous year. Principal regions include Australia,
south-east Asia, continental Europe and the Nordic countries.
8 By 2007, 1,200 people worked for Betfair across the main offices in Hammersmith and Stevenage (UK),

Mosta (Malta) and Hobart (Australia) including 300 in IT alone.
9 Technology challenges are indicated by the 5 million transactions a day processed, equating to 300 bets a
second. Using Oracle database technology, Betfair processes 99.9 per cent of bets in less than one second.
Source: eSuperbrands (2005) and corporate site (www.betfaircorporate.com)

E-government defined
E-government E-government refers to the application of e-commerce technologies to government and
The application of public services. In the same way that e-business can be understood as transactions with cus-
e-commerce
technologies to tomers (citizens), suppliers and internal communications, e-government covers a similar
government and public range of applications:
services for citizens and
businesses. Citizens – facilities for dissemination of information and use of online services at local and
national levels. For example, at a local level you can find out when refuse is collected and
at national level it is possible to fill in tax returns.