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sports betting wagering innovator launches new start-up

17 November 2021

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By Douglas Fraser

Business and economy editor, Scotland

One of Scotland's most successful innovation groups is beginning once again with a brand-new company - and has actually protected the greatest preliminary investment of any British start-up company.

BetDEX is being led by Nigel Eccles, who co-founded dream sports betting website FanDuel in 2009 in Edinburgh.

The brand-new company has seed financing of $21m.

It aims to introduce a brand-new open source software platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting, in the first half of next year.

The company is hiring staff from a base in Scotland.

was offered to Flutter - previously called Paddy Power Betfair - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.

However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders are in legal conflict with FanDuel's later stage investors over the method in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the rising evaluation.

Mr Eccles stated that one thing he discovered from the FanDuel experience was to pick financiers carefully.

He told BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, among which was the significance of who we select as investors in this brand-new company, to guarantee their values are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary responsibilities responsibly, and that they're the best partners for us."

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by 7 backers of US innovation companies, including 2 large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in investing in business running with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, stated: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high rates for poor items and limits trades by its most successful users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this method. We will effectively complete versus incumbents with a considerably exceptional product and low charges, which is now possible with the development of the blockchain innovation."

As chairman of the new company, Mr Eccles said it could look familiar to retail punters utilized to existing online firms.

'Pool of skill'

However, he states that those who use its platform to run their own sports betting companies will be able to innovate and create a larger series of sports betting items.

He said the normal share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX ought to enable that to fall listed below 1%.

The company will develop its own wagering apps to run on the platform.

Mr Eccles stated these would take an "smart, thoughtful" approach to the method they are marketed to protect those who have problem with problem sports betting.

He stated the team of around 500 software engineers who helped construct FanDuel from Scotland showed that it remains the place to build a company. BetDEX has the exact same head of technology, Stuart Tonner.

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was built on an extremely knowledgeable, extremely skilled engineering team, that built this item that might process millions of bets and millions of users.

"There's a genuine talent swimming pool of experienced engineers who assisted us develop our product and that's what we wish to take advantage of for BetDEX as well."

Related topics

Edinburgh

Sports betting

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Published

20 November 2017
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