scrap prices

[bolpx001]

Hi Again, does anybody have any ideas on how to get prices from the bet365 website into and excel SS? I have tried to screen scrape but it not marvellous - Paul

[Captain Sensible]

When you say your current scraping is not marvelous what do you mean?

I think Bet365 use flash these days so it's a real pain to scrape that and get the data into excel. What are you using the data for , I found 365 soon limit accounts if you're arbing so it's not usually worth putting in too much effort and they never take too large bets at their odds so not always the most reliable indication of probabilities. If you're trying to display live 365 prices against betfair odds you may find they blacklist your IP address also as they don't even give out their xml odds feeds to affiliates too freely. Maybe look at the mobile sites and any cut down sites as they may supply the odds via xml rather than via flash. If your needs for the prices isn't that intensive you may find just scraping oddschecker is easier to get the prices.

[bolpx001]

Thanks again Captain Sensible, I have two ideas in my head, one is to track current SP odds as a trading indicator for Betfair and the other to arb the prices. I had/have a feeling the second option might not be a runner but you never know? I know it sounds stupid but I did not think of Oddschecker as a source of SP prices. Probably because I was a bit blinkered trying to avail of bet365's free bet offer if your horse wins at 4/1 or over. I think I have had about 10 such races but no winners, hard to believe but true, fortunately I lad them all off on Betfair so broke even. I was thinking the effort was not worth and thought to automate the process using macros etc - best regards Paul

[alrodopial]

Maybe look at the mobile sites and any cut down sites as they may supply the odds via xml rather than via flash

more info about this?

[Captain Sensible]

Flash is quite hard to scrape if you don't know the addresses of the data feed, so generally if you can find a version of the site that doesn't use flash like the mobile phone betting site or lite version (if they do one) then it's easier to scrape the data because it's usually in xml format which excel can easily read.

Just about every bookmakers has an xml feed but they're usually ony given to affiliates who refer traffic to them. Been a while since I've scraped any bookmakers as the amounts they let you get on it became pointless for me to bother looking for the xml feeds to be honest.

[alrodopial]

the 365 mobile site uses flash too
this is the one I'm looking for, simple live soccer matches, match odds -1,X,2
Any ideas?