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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 effective technology teams is starting again with a new company - and has actually secured the greatest initial financial 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 firm has seed funding of $21m.

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

The business is recruiting staff from a base in Scotland.

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

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

Mr Eccles said that a person thing he learned from the FanDuel experience was to pick financiers thoroughly.
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He told BBC Scotland: "We took a great deal of lessons from that, among which was the importance of who we select as financiers in this new organization, to ensure their values are lined up with ours, that they take their fiduciary duties properly, and that they're the right partners for us."

The $21m seed financing for BetDEX consists of stakes taken by seven backers of US innovation firms, consisting of two big funds - Paradigm and FTX - which specialise in purchasing business running with crypto-currencies.

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

"BetDEX is diametrically opposed to this technique. We will successfully contend against incumbents with a considerably superior product and low charges, which is now possible with the advent of the blockchain technology."

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

'Pool of talent'

However, he says that those who use its platform to run their own sports betting firms will have the ability to innovate and develop a wider series of wagering items.

He said the common share taken by online bookmakers is 7% to 10% of a stake, however BetDEX needs to allow for that to fall listed below 1%.

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

Mr Eccles said these would take an "intelligent, thoughtful" method to the way they are marketed to safeguard those who battle with problem gaming.

He stated the team of around 500 software application engineers who helped build FanDuel from Scotland showed that it stays the location to construct a company. BetDEX has the very same head of innovation, Stuart Tonner.
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"A lot of that [FanDuel] success was built on an extremely competent, extremely gifted engineering team, that built this product that could process countless bets and countless users.

"There's a real talent pool of experienced engineers who assisted us develop our product and that's what we wish to leverage for BetDEX too."

Related subjects

Edinburgh

sports betting wagering

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FanDuel founder leaves business

Published

20 November 2017
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