The premium charge is an additional charge which may be applied to a very small percentage (less than 0.5%) of our customers. The charge simply applies on accounts which make a persistant profit and meet a certain criteria.

Please note that if you become eligible to incur Premium Charges, we will contact you before any charges are paid.

You will only be considered for the Premium Charge if, over the lifetime of your account, you satisfy all of the following criteria:

• Your account is in profit;
• Your total charges generated are less than 20% of gross profits; and
• You bet in more than 250 markets.

Two further conditions reduce the likelihood that you will be required to pay the Premium Charge:

• Any single win that constitutes more than 50% of your gross profits over the lifetime of your account will be excluded from the calculation; and
• Each customer has a lifetime allowance of £1,000 of Premium Charges which can be incurred before any Premium Charge is paid.

Each week the customers who meet all the conditions set out above will be charged the lesser of:

• The difference between 20% of the previous week’s gross profits and the total charges generated during the week; and
• The difference between 20% of gross profits and the total charges generated during the lifetime of the account.

Please note that for the purposes of calculating the charge we will assume that the charge has been in place since Betfair launched in June 2000. This means that we will consider all customers to have generated charges equal to at least 20% of lifetime gross profits as of the 12th October 2009. However, this also means that for some customers, some or all of the £1,000 allowance against the charge will have been used prior to 12th October 2009 in order to offset hypothetical charges paid. The assumption that hypothetical charges, less allowance, were paid prior to the introduction of the Premium Charge will typically reduce the Premium Charge a customer would incur.