sports betting wagering innovator launches brand-new start-up

17 November 2021

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By Douglas Fraser

Business and economy editor, Scotland

Among Scotland's most successful innovation groups is beginning again with a new firm - and has protected the biggest initial investment of any British start-up company.

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

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

It intends to release a brand-new open source software application 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 - formerly named Paddy Power Betfair - in 2018 and is now worth more than $30bn.

However, Mr Eccles and other co-founders remain in legal dispute with FanDuel's later stage financiers over the way in which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh group without a share of the increasing valuation.
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Mr Eccles stated that a person thing he found out from the FanDuel experience was to pick financiers carefully.

He informed BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, one of which was the significance of who we select as investors in this new company, to guarantee their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties properly, which they're the best partners for us."

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX includes stakes taken by seven backers of US innovation companies, including 2 large funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in buying companies operating with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, president of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting wagering market charges high costs for bad items and limits trades by its most effective users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this method. We will effectively compete versus incumbents with a considerably superior item and low fees, which is now possible with the arrival of the blockchain technology."

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

'Pool of talent'

However, he says that those who use its platform to run their own sports betting companies will be able to innovate and create a larger variety of wagering products.

He stated the normal share taken by online bookies is 7% to 10% of a stake, but BetDEX should allow for that to fall below 1%.

The company will establish its own wagering apps to operate on the platform.

Mr Eccles said these would take an "smart, thoughtful" method to the way they are marketed to protect those who fight with issue gambling.

He stated the group of around 500 software application engineers who assisted construct FanDuel from Scotland showed that it remains the location to construct a company. BetDEX has the same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.

"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was developed on a highly competent, very talented engineering team, that developed this item that might process millions of bets and countless users.

"There's a real skill pool of knowledgeable engineers who helped us develop our product and that's what we wish to take advantage of for BetDEX as well."

Related topics

Edinburgh

sports betting wagering

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20 November 2017