Spiffx Primer

Spiffx is a trading platform that takes tools from the financial market and makes them available to the sports betting market. Spiffx is primarily aimed at betting professionals (i.e. sportsbooks and traders) who want to manage their risk. For example, the World Cup is a large event with a lot of favourites where sportsbooks expose themselves to large risks. For the duration of the World cup, sportsbooks employ teams to handle that risk. Spiffx is something such teams can use to secure a price and manage that risk.

Spiffx was incorporated on the 6 November 2012, licensed in Malta since April 2013 and has been in operation since August 2013.

Spiffx betting markets are based around the major European football leagues. The football markets include the English Premier League, Champions League and EURO 2016 qualifiers as well as the Spanish, Italian and German first divisions. Spiffx offer both pre-game and in-play markets.

As a niche product, Spiffx does not need a large client base like a bookmaker. It needs enough active customers to provide liquidity. In April 2015, the total number of registered Spiffx customers was approximately 3,400.

Although Spiffx doesn’t offer a "play" money account, you can open up an account with a small amount of money to get a feel for the system.

To facilitate automatic trading (or machine to machine trading, as Spiffx put it) Spiffx provide a REST API that enables developers to create bespoke applications, which replace the web based interface that Spiffx provides. The API is available to anyone with an active Spiffx account.

Spiffx offers two different products, the Spiffindex and the Darkpool, which allow for both proactive and reactive risk management.

The Spiffindex

The Spiffindex is the basis for Spiffx’s tag line: "The alternative betting exchange". Spiffindex is a marketplace where customers can exploit price movements in their bets. Customers predict the outcome of a football match (just as they would on any other betting site) they also predict whether their chosen price (odds) will move over or under the market price (the Spiffindex). If the chosen team wins and the price moves in their favour, the bet will be multiplied by the points the price has moved

A detailed description of the Spiffindex is available on this page.

The Darkpool

The name Darkpool has its origins in the finance industry. Dark pools are private forums that facilitate anonymous trading. The primary purpose of dark pools is to minimise market impact. By restricting access to undesired market participants, and by not revealing quotes, dark pools enable institutional investors to minimise their information leakage and realise more efficient executions.

The Spiffx Darkpool service is a betting exchange, offering users the chance to back and lay selections on football markets. Unlike betting exchanges such as Betfair and BETDAQ, the Darkpool charges a monthly transaction fee of 0.10% on customers’ matched bets, rather than charging commission on net winnings.

The Darkpool’s hidden order depth feature ensures that a customer’s orders will not be displayed for other customers to see, which helps participants to keep their strategies hidden.