Betfair lifetime results - how to make sense of them

2021 update: The post below from 10 years ago refers to the old 'Lifetime conversion' spreadsheet which worked with the previous report that betfair used to provide.  It appears that betfair will not be providing the 'Lifetime' report going forwards.

Betfair have recently been providing customers with the 'Betfair Customer Report' or 'Statement' for their betting history.  This has two major problems compared to the original report.  See this post for more info and the new solution - ‘Betfair Customer Report’ conversion spreadsheet.  The original 'lifetime' conversion spreadsheet is also included in the bundle - in case betfair revert to the original report format!

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Whilst Betfair offer up to 3 months of Betting Profit and Loss data download from "My Account" area on their website, if you require any more than that, then you need to contact the helpdesk at info@betfair.com or by phone.  They will provide a report of the entire "lifetime" P&L of your account.  I received mine in about 4 hours - and my account has been active for 10 years!  It's probably a good idea to contact them in the morning though to get such a quick response.

However, I was surprised to learn that Betfair will not provide this "lifetime" P&L report in the same format as the one you can download from your account area.  Confusingly, they don't seem to have a standard format either, as Mets & I initially got reports in totally different formats and level of detail. The key is to be specific what you ask them for (more on this below).

The good news is that I have developed a spreadsheet to convert the lifetime report into an identical format as the standard P&L report. The standard format means that you can then import your lifetime P&L into the Results Summary spreadsheet (as well as any other compatible system you may have, if you want).  Of course, going forwards, all your results are stored safely in the Results Summary spreadsheet and you won't need to ask for them from Betfair again - so long as you download your P&L at least once every 3 months.  

As all your data is downloaded to your computer, you keep your P&L results private - there is NO uploading to an anonymous 3rd party website.

So - what format do you need to get your lifetime report in?  Here's what the headings looked like on mine (just one row of data is showing):

Report from Betfair showing results across the account lifetime

The key points are that:

1. The report must be at event level (i.e. total profit for a market, not each individual bet you placed on the market).
2. It must have the following columns: "Event settled date", "Sport", "Event menu hint", "Event name - long", "Net p&l". Any additional columns do not cause a problem, they are ignored.  The column order of the report doesn't matter.

When you contact Betfair you could just copy and paste the above criteria into your email, maybe even include the screenshot.

It's really simple to use the conversions spreadsheet, here's what it looks like:

You can buy the Results Summary spreadsheet here.

If, like me, you've had results in the past that you'd rather forget about (!), it needn't be all bad. This experience has actually been useful for me to also remember all the profitable periods I've achieved over the lifetime of my account.  I tended to only remember the bad ones!  I've actually found it quite positive to know for sure which areas I've won at over time and to have continuing confidence with those whilst reminding myself why I'm avoiding others.

I hope you find this useful too.  Cheers!