As we can see Betfair avoided defining an active customer until pressed. Then it responded in a roundabout fashion.

The criterion of at least one bet that week, is hardly what reasonable people would consider active.

It includes freeloaders, once-a-year'ers and many others whose turnover is so inconsequential that they are a loss-making segment for Betfair.

If instead Betfair had chosen a more meaningful group say "regulars" with a disclosed criteria of say 100 markets a month, then we would be in a position analyse Betfair's claims.

But obviously that sensible move would result in a figure far in excess of that 0.5%.

That figure of 0.5% received a thorough caning on the Betfair forum, since a very high percentage of posters found themselves affected.

And common sense suggests that Betfair would not bother tackling such a minor percentage - unless of course there was some far more significant statistic it was not disclosing.

Yet for some reason we find people actually going in to bat for Betfair, quoting that questionable statistic as if actually signified something.