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Sports betting innovator launches brand-new start-up
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17 November 2021
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By Douglas Fraser

Business and economy editor, Scotland

One of Scotland's most effective innovation groups is starting again with a brand-new firm - and has actually protected the most significant preliminary financial investment of any British start-up company.

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

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

It intends to launch a brand-new open source software application platform, on which others can innovate in sports betting wagering, in the very first half of next year.

The company is hiring staff from a base in Scotland.
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FanDuel was sold to Flutter - previously named Paddy Power 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 financiers over the method which they structured a takeover, which left the Edinburgh team without a share of the rising appraisal.

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

He told BBC Scotland: "We took a lot of lessons from that, one of which was the value of who we choose as financiers in this new organization, to guarantee their worths are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary responsibilities responsibly, and that they're the right partners for us."

The $21m seed funding for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by 7 backers of US innovation firms, including 2 big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in buying business operating with crypto-currencies.

Varun Sudhakar, primary executive of BetDEX, said: "The sports betting wagering industry charges high prices for poor products and limits trades by its most effective users.

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will effectively complete against incumbents with a significantly exceptional product and low charges, which is now possible with the introduction of the blockchain technology."

As chairman of the brand-new company, Mr Eccles stated it could look familiar to retail punters used to existing online companies.

'Pool of talent'

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

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

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

Mr Eccles stated these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" method to the method they are marketed to secure those who struggle with issue gambling.

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

"A great deal of that [FanDuel] success was built on an extremely competent, really talented engineering group, that built this product that could process countless bets and countless users.

"There's a genuine talent pool of skilled engineers who assisted us build our product and that's what we want to utilize for BetDEX too."

Related topics

Edinburgh

Sports betting

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Published

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