CVC is unlikely to come up with an offer for Betfair that will win over punters | Nils Pratley

Racegoers at Haydock Park. For all its travails, the internet betting exchange Betfair is a quality, cash-generative business. Photograph: Nigel French/PA

One can understand why CVC's nose for a deal has led it, with the help of 6.5% shareholder Richard Koch, to Betfair. The company has disappointed since floating at an overpriced and overhyped 13 a share in 2010. And Betfair's newish top management, under chairman Gerald Corbett and chief executive Breon Corcoran, had not put a rocket under the share price before Monday.

Their strategy, unveiled last December, is to concentrate on regulated markets, withdraw from those where regulatory obstacles are high, and attack costs. That plan sounds perfectly sensible, but could be characterised as a prescription for a long, hard slog. A bid that offers tomorrow's share price today could have a chance of success.

That's the theory. In practice, the chances are not high of CVC coming up with a price that obliges Corbett & co to roll over – in other words,11-ish, as opposed to the current share price of 782p. Corcoran, fresh out of Paddy Power, seems to carry the support of Betfair's powers behind the throne and is the kind of pragmatic, cost-conscious manager the company has needed for a while. Why ditch him before he's had a chance to deliver?

Betfair, for all its post-flotation confusion and management exits, still seems at heart to be a quality, cash-generative business, especially now that it accepts it is a betting company rather than a technology titan. Unless CVC wants to throw silly money at the shareholders, there's no logical reason to accept an opportunistic private equity bid.